Van Lustbader, Eric - Dark Homecoming(1997) (Van Lustbader Eric)

DARK
HOMECOMING

ERIC
LUSTBADER

POCKET BOOKS New York
London Toronto Sydney Tokyo Singapore

This book is a work
of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of
the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.

There ensued a small
but ungainly pause while "Mope-itty Mope" by the Boss-Tones
doo-wopped out of the speakers. Music of these old American groups
from the 1950s was Heitor's idea. Antonio would have preferred
Machito's hyper-hot Afro-Cubano jazz, but it seemed the kids who hung
out in Miami's South Beach weren't very hip to Latino roots, and
didn't much care to be. Their loss. But even Antonio had to admit it
was the Boneyard's gain.

Ever since they'd
opened this club, it had been packed. Antonio had been skeptical when
he'd first heard the idea, but it had seemed so off-the-wall that
Heitor had glommed on to it right away. Not that they were directly
involved; like always, they were far removed from official ownership.
Deep in the shadows where nobody could see, they raked in the money.
From the first moment they had set foot on American soil, they had
made certain that all of their business dealings—from their
main chemical and ore mining company to a fistful of import-export
holding companies to their fledgling entertainment venture, which
indirectly owned the Boneyard as well as other clubs throughout
Florida and the Southeast—were strictly legitimate. Unlike in
Latin America, where graft and wholesale corruption were among the
main moneymakers of old-line family businesses and governments alike.
These men were comfortable with politicians and bureaucrats. They
knew their way around governments because they were able to sniff out
the tiniest whiff of corruption and turn it to their own ends.

"I don't want to
hear the dream." Looking around, Antonio could see that P. T.
Barnum had vastly underestimated his market potential. There's ten
thousand suckers born every minute. "I have an evil feeling
about it."

When they looked at
each other, it was like staring in the mirror. They both thought,
simultaneously: There is my brother, but there is also me.
That was because Heitor and Antonio were identical twins, even down
to the extraordinary amber color of their eyes.

Heitor said: "An
evil feeling, is it?" His face took on the aspect of a hungry
fox nosing its way into a henhouse.

Tall and lean as
serpents, they were handsome men, in their own way. Their hair, thick
and curling, was tawny as copper, and the planes of their faces were
sculpted hard over ridged bone. This attribute and many others they
inherited from their mother. But another, mystic side to them they
gained from someone outside their family circle. This was manifested
in their auras, which were powerful and magnetic in the manner of a
black widow. There was a remarkable stillness about them, the curled
and damped energy one observes in liquid mercury. They were predators
who did not have to move much in order to get what they wanted.

When "Hong Kong
Jelly Wong" by the Royaltones came on, Heitor said, "This
dream is important, and evil or not, it must be spoken of." He
and his brother were dressed in shades of gray that most approximated
the inside of an oyster shell: short-sleeved shirts, tight trousers
from the 1960s, thin-soled Keds without socks. Both of them despised
socks.

Antonio said nothing,
knowing in his heart this moment would come.

Heitor said, "I
dreamed I was a very devout Jew. And as this Jew I woke from a dream
as if I was just born. Understand me, this dream was more like a holy
vision." His arms, thrown wide, described a circle. "The
holy vision told me that the Messiah was coming on Sunday. Good news,
is it? The evil news was it was Super Bowl Sunday."

For a moment, the
twins stared at each other. Then, as one, they exploded into
laughter. The extraordinary thing was that even in such an unguarded
moment, they seemed like mirror images. And, in truth, on the surface
there was virtually nothing to differentiate them, save perhaps one
liked doo-wop and the other liked Cu-bop.

"I spoke to the
Weimaraner today." Heitor meant Senator Weiman.

"I told you not
to do that," Antonio said. "It's too soon."

"He wants to
take me hunting in Virginia."

Antonio sighed.
"Wouldn't that be nice."

"The big firms
in his state are beginning to make him understand the worth of our
copper and lithium importing."

"Re-election,"
Antonio commented. "The American way, is it not?"

The twins stared at
each other and grinned.

"I want to hunt
in Virginia." There was an almost childlike wist-fulness in
Heitor's voice.

"Not now . . .
not yet." Seeing the look on Heitor's face—his
face, Antonio took his twin's hand and squeezed it. "I know how
you live for the hunt."

"Both of us, my
dear." Heitor's eyes were half-closed. "But it's for a very
different kind of hunt." Quite abruptly, they'd left the
pedestrian subject of the Weimaraner far behind.

Antonio's amber eyes
appeared to glow. "Yes, I know you're burning to plunge the
scalpel in yourself."

"I hate him,"
Heitor admitted. "He's arrogant and spiteful."

"He has what we
covet," Antonio said, cutting to the heart of the matter.
"Paciencia." Have patience. "Soon now it will
all be ours. You know the plan and it's a good one."

"If we were in
Asuncion, my hands would be red with his blood."

"But you're
not," Antonio admonished. "We have come up in the world.
This is the big leagues. For the time being, our behavior is under a
microscope."

"Civilization,"
Heitor grimaced. "It makes me chafe."

Antonio did not
reply. Instead, he watched a blonde woman in her late sixties in wide
red suspenders whiz by on in-line skates. All she wore under the
suspenders was a pair of workout shorts and a tank top bathing suit.
Just as she was passing the front window, they saw a small,
dark-skinned man leap across her path. In one motion, he snatched her
purse and pushed her violently off balance. Arms flailing, mouth
opened wide in shock, she pin-wheeled awkwardly onto the sidewalk as
the dark-skinned man began to run.

The twins were up and
out the door in an instant. Communication between them was
instantaneous. Heitor sprinted very fast after the dark-skinned man.
Like a cheetah he could run a quarter mile in record-setting time
without breaking a sweat. He raced around a corner, lunged forward,
and slammed his open hand into the small of the thief's back.

In one more stride,
Heitor had him firmly in tow. Without a word he spun him around. The
thief saw two fingers outstretched toward him. For one agonizing
second he stared full bore into Heitor's amber eyes. What he saw
there was impossible to say, but he gasped and took an involuntary
step backward. Heitor, seeming to change his mind, reached out and,
almost nonchalantly, slammed the back of his hand into the side of
the thief's head. He did this with such force that the thief was
hurled off his feet. In the air, the man gave a little surprised yip
like a dog whose paw has been stepped on. Then his head cracked
sickeningly into a concrete-block wall, and he collapsed in a tangle.
Heitor bent, retrieved the skater's purse, and lost total interest in
the man.

When he returned to
the scene of the mugging, he found Antonio kneeling beside the woman.
He'd gotten her sitting up, her back against the plate glass of the
club front. Her right leg, apparently uninjured, was stretched
straight out in front of her, but her left leg was bent at the knee.

"All right, is
it?" Heitor asked.

"The dark stones
know," Antonio replied, and this alerted Heitor. The palms of
Antonio's hands were carefully pressed against the skater's left
calf, the fingers gripping the muscle. The woman had the back of her
head resting against the glass, her eyes closed.

"I need you,"
Antonio mouthed.

Heitor reached out
and with his left hand cupped the woman's raised knee. Thus engaged,
the two brothers stared into each other's eyes. Something passed
between them, some spark or energy, transient as a flame quickly and
covertly snuffed out.

In a moment, the
woman gave a little sigh and opened gray eyes, filled with the
memories of her years.

"I have your
purse," Heitor said when her gaze alit on him. "I don't
think anything is missing." His smile seemed to compel her to do
likewise.

"Feeling better,
perhaps?" Antonio asked her.

"Yes, much
better." She wanted to get up, and they helped her. She looked
from one of their faces to the other, clearly stunned. "The pain
is gone. Not even an ache. It's as if nothing had happened."

"We have a
saying where we come from." Heitor handed her the purse. "
'At sinrise, the night is only a shadow of itself.'"

"That's'sunrise,'
" Antonio corrected.

"Maybe it is."
Heitor smiled.

As the skater looked
from one twin to the other, Antonio lifted a beckoning arm.
"Escuchame, señora. Come inside and have a
drink. Sientase. Feel comfortable."

"That's
extraordinarily kind of you." The woman allowed them to guide
her into the Boneyard and onto a sofa. "You both have been so
wonderful. Genuine Good Samaritans."

As Heitor went to
order her a latte, he heard her say to Antonio, "People
like you restore one's faith in humanity."

"Bueno,
señora. Being in the right place at the right time, there
is no substitute for that, yes?"

A moment later,
Antonio joined him at the bar. They were surrounded by bright,
polished copper and fragrant steam.

"Our sainted
mother knows we could be like that all the time," Heitor said.

"If we chose
to." Antonio rested his elbows on the bar. He seemed relaxed,
almost somnolent, like a crocodile in the afternoon sun.

Heitor watched the
waitress deliver the latte and some chocolate and almond
biscotti to the skater. "Why would we choose to?"
he asked.

In a cloud of milky
steam, Heitor said, "This puts me in mind of the time I was run
over."

"Don't
exaggerate," Antonio admonished. "It was only your arm that
went under the wheel."

"That didn't
stop you from hauling the driver out of his car."

"Honor bound me.
He was careless with my brother," Antonio said. "Besides, I
felt your pain and I was moved to great anger."

"Great anger,
yes." Heitor said this with an almost wistful tone. In a
peculiar way, he seemed more animated now than when he was bouncing
the petty thief's head against the alley wall. It was as if he was
vibrating to some inner rhythm. "You held his face quite, quite
still."

"While you
stared into his eyes."

"That was the
good part," Heitor acknowledged. "Summoning the dark
stones."

Antonio dragged in a
deep lungful of percolating espresso and cinnamon chocolate. "Until
the blood fountained out of his nose and mouth."

"Sped from his
ears like horses under the whip," Heitor recalled rapturously.

"You remember
the best part," Antonio prodded.

"But of course."
The burst of memory was like a delicious taste in Heitor's mouth. "We
came home covered in blood and leaped in the pool."

"Holding hands."

"Joined and
energized, we could not stop shouting," Heitor said. "And
Dona came out at the sounds of our raucous commotion."

"It was her
birthday. Perfecto." Antonio licked his lips with the
tip of his tongue. "She saw the pool and thought we had filled
it with pink champagne."

"We'd done that
once."

"A truly
shocking treat," Antonio affirmed.

"Not as truly
shocking as this one," Heitor said.

Antonio nodded. "Not
nearly. Dona squealed, stripped off her thong, and jumped in the
bloody pool."

At that moment, as he
canvassed Lincoln Road through the front window, Heitor mouthed, "I
see him."

Without turning his
head to look, Antonio said under his breath. "Leaving, is he?"

Heitor, looking
beyond the gray-eyed woman enjoying her latte and biscotti,
kept the man in the periphery of his vision. "As predicted. Your
information was prescient."

"Now he's a
dangerous man."

"Others, as
well," Heitor said.

Antonio's amber eyes
seemed to brighten, as if he were shaking off a dream.

"All work and no
play is making us acutely dull."

Heitor said, "Madre
de mentiras, when you speak in oxymorons, something is not right
with the order of the world."

Antonio laughed. "My
thought exactly."

The twins turned and
removed themselves from the Boneyard like wraiths.

Having purloined and
stored the Boneyard's computer data on a floppy disk he carried on
his person, Robin Garner walked with an unhurried gait down Lincoln
Road. Garner, a federal agent, had insinuated himself into the Bonita
twins' sphere of influence with the extreme care of a probe
navigating the outer rim of a dark star. That had been eighteen
months ago. With sufficient difficulty and hazard, he had gotten his
entree and, as per instructions, had crouched like a drone at the
edge of their intricate web. Do nothing, his handler had
cautioned him, and the Bonitas can suspect nothing Wait and,
above all else, watch.

Garner had the eyes
of an expert watcher. It was what the ACTF had trained him to do. The
Anti-Cartel Task Force was the semiofficial entity within the Justice
Department for whom he toiled in darkness and filth. The ACTF had
been created to interdict the alarming rise of the exportation of
criminal activities from country to country. Governmental studies had
established this as a worldwide trend. As such, it was as much a
symbol of the new order in world eco-politics as it was a threat to
the United States. Instantaneous access to information made every
government's—as well as every criminal organization's—actions
interrelated. But on a personal level, the ACTF gave him work he
could sink his teeth into, work that mattered.

So Garner had waited
and watched, becoming a spider just like the Bonitas. It wasn't all
that difficult. Why would it be? He was a natural at penetration and
camouflage. From an early age, Garner had become proficient at hiding
his true nature. When, at twelve, he'd realized that he was
profoundly different from the boys around him, he knew he was better
off waiting. Two years later, when he'd had it confirmed to him by a
sexual incident that he was gay, he knew he'd have to learn even more
patience. His parents were not the kind of people to be supportive of
alternative lifestyles, and he was no rebel to declare himself and
let the chips fall where they might. Family was important to him; at
that time, more important than his sexual orientation. If that made
him a coward in certain people's eyes, so be it.

Being gay in SoBe
provided distinct advantages. For one thing, Garner blended in just
fine. Here, you'd better be either gay or bi or you didn't really
belong. For another, it made him seem less of a threat to the macho
Bonitas. Also, his years as a mole inside his own family that
sensitized him to the subtle vibes to which others were blind. This
talent, especially, served him well in the warren of offices behind
the Boneyard, where he had worked ten hours a day since the day it
had opened. Being tuned in to those vibes had allowed him to crack
the case he'd been working on.

The worst part of
being gay for Garner was the feeling it gave him of being helpless
and ineffectual in a straight society. All he wanted to do was make a
difference. And bringing the Bonita twins to justice would make a
helluva difference. Even if others took the official glory, which
they inevitably would, Garner, deep in the Washington shadows, would
have his satisfaction.

Slowly, inexorably,
through chinks so minute only he could have sensed them, he'd caught
quickening glimpses of the Bonita's clandestine operations, suspected
but never provable. Only now, having leaped through a sudden crack in
their defenses, did he have enough to put them away for multiple
lifetimes—if only he could get the data to the safe house where
his handler awaited, patient in his own way.

Garner slipped into a
side alley that reeked of urine and dried fish. Using a key he had
been given, he opened a side door to the White House. This hard-core
gay club, which had taken over a long-abandoned movie theater from
the 1940s, was named not for the American presidential residence but
the similarly named Russian senate building.

In truth, Garner did
not know what to make of his handler. Of course, he trusted him with
his life, but the disadvantage of Garner's sexual orientation arose
when they met.

"They don't
fully trust you." His handler always opened their
de-briefings in this unsettling manner. "Yes, mea culpa, I'm
harder on you than I am on my straight agents. That's because when it
comes to you, they're harder on me."

But they trusted
Garner enough to embed him within the Bonitas' sphere of influence.
That was the paradox of federal bureaucracy that remained, like time,
a constant.

Since Garner had
joined the ACTF, it had been rocked by turmoil. Most of what he knew
came from rumors he had gleaned in the dimness of company bars, of
hidden agendas woven deep within the bureaucratic quagmire that was
part and parcel of any federal agency. He might have discounted these
rumors as simply part of the paranoia that went with the boggy
territory. But even he, in those restive periods when he waited to be
dangled at the end of a penetration line, had noticed the altered
vibrations, as if, down in the center of things, quickened drumbeats
could ever so faintly be heard. Nothing definitive, mind you, just
echoes of verbal charges: an altered directive here, a change in
personnel there, cuts in field teams in Southeast Asia, a beefing up
of others in Latin America. That was before Spaulding Gunn was
installed as new director of the ACTF three years ago. Quite quickly
after that the subrosa drumbeats faded into obscurity and the gossip
mongers of Foggy Bottom turned to fresher, juicier items to slice and
dice in their mean-spirited way.

What it all meant
Garner could not say, except that eighteen months ago his handler had
given him the Bonitas as high priority subjects for an undercover
operation. Why were the Bonitas suddenly at the top of the ACTF
enemies list? Up until last week, Garner had had no idea. Certainly,
his handler wasn't going to tell him. Quite frankly, Garner had no
business speculating. Hand to his heart, wrapped in the flag, he was
required only to soldier on; to follow orders and, hopefully, to win
the day.

Garner made his
careful way through dark and deserted corridors smelling of old age
and new sex. The partying that went on here all through the night and
early morning was often inconceivable to him. Like religious sects,
there were all kinds of gays. Long ago, Garner had decided that,
though gay, he wanted to make his way in the so-called straight
world. This required an entire set of attitudes that the gays who
inhabited this place found repugnant. The naming of the club was no
happenstance, but a form of quasipoliti-cal statement. Here was new
territory, as far from the auspices of mainstream USA as was Russia.
This was the United Nation of Queers, long may it wave!

He found the old,
rickety staircase hidden behind one end of the long sweeping bar on
the ground floor and went silently and steadily up it.

But try as he might,
he could not be the good soldier, running full tilt into
unquestioning battle. He was too good at using his brain. The trouble
was, Garner sometimes thought of himself as cannon fodder—clever
but eminently dispensable. If this turned out to be a suicide
mission, they would not blink an eye, let alone feel the
remotest twinge of remorse. He wondered whether his handler would
think of him after he'd turned away from Garner's newly turned grave.

Dark thoughts for a
straightforward undercover operation. But it was one thing to gather
enough evidence to bring charges against subjects for a well-oiled
drug operation cleverly hidden within the cracks of an oh-so-legit
business, quite another when these men were Antonio and Heitor
Bonita. They had no idea how dangerous the Bonitas could be.
The twins were fanatically secretive; a sure and unquiet death lay in
wait for anyone who they discovered penetrating those secrets.

Coming to the head of
the stairs, he shook off such morbid thoughts. He was used to them;
they cropped up near the end of missions, when the nerves were rubbed
raw, the danger level at its highest, and holding on to patience was
his most valuable resource.

He was close to the
rendezvous point. Close to bringing to a successful conclusion the
most important mission of his career. He could not rid himself of the
fantasy that at long last even his handler's handler would recognize
his contribution. That, after this triumph, his handler would never
again open a debriefing with the words, They don't fully trust
you.

Garner's handler
thought it ironic to set up a safe house in a place that personally
made him want to puke. Garner could not afford to be offended; he
could see the logic in it. When in Rome… The old saw still
made the most sense.

As prearranged,
Garner entered the back office without knocking. It was an anteroom,
actually part of the star's dressing room when this place had hosted
vaudeville acts between film showings. On the old wooden desk near
the door to the back room was an imitation Tiffany lamp that no
longer worked, a dried-up blotter, and a pile of out-of-date People
magazines. Frosted windows, painted shut long ago, allowed a feeble
seepage of light.

Garner went through
the gloom and counted the number of People magazines in the
stack. There were seven, all aligned. That meant Garner's handler was
in the next room and everything was secure. This was part of the
handler's job: to keep the safe houses sterile, the rendezvous points
secure, the agents-in-place from being terminated.

Garner opened the
door to the inner room and was swallowed by darkness. Three paces
inside he slipped on something slick. He almost fell, but a strong
hand grasped his elbow and steadied him.

"Cuidado,
you could hurt yourself."

"Thanks,"
he said, automatically. But he stiffened. What was that smell?

"It's a shame,"
the familiar voice said, "but we no longer trust you."

"What?"
Garner turned his head so violently he heard a vertebra crack.

"Such a shame,"
another, similar voice said, "because we liked you."

More than a smell, it
was a stench. A closely held beam snapped on and Gainer blinked.

"Madre de
mentiras, look what you stepped into."

Garner stared down
and his heart almost slammed into his rib cage. Blood and intestines
lay on the floor in an almost perfect circle.

"Muy
hermosa," said the second voice. Very beautiful.

Garner's gaze
followed the beam of light as if it were a magnet. Its uncompromising
glare marched across the small room. Garner gave a little groan as he
recognized the face of his handler. That was about all he could
recognize of him. He tried to look away, but as he did so, a hand of
iron seized the back of his neck and he was forced nearer and nearer
to the object of their desire. In the uncertain light the human head,
floating as if on a sea of silken darkness, had an almost surreal
look, like an evil omen in a dream.

Lights blazed.
Garner, caught like a deer in headlights, looked up, blinking into
the glare. Four metal-shell photographer's floods, clipped to
shelves, drenched the bloody scene in light so bright it was obscene.

"¡Ay,
fantastica!" It was Heitor Bonita's voice, crowing.
"¡Que duke!" How sweet! Now that the initial
shock had dissipated, Garner was certain.

"Señor,
por favor, this way."

Garner felt a
powerful tug on his elbow from Antonio Bonita. They knew everything,
Garner thought. How had they found out? Who had given him away?

But there was no time
to pursue these deeply disturbing thoughts. He saw that the homey
ex-dressing room had been tricked out in frightening fashion. The
walls on either side of him contained markings drawn in blood—the
handler's blood, Garner had no doubt. These symbols seemed vaguely
familiar to Garner: a triangle within a circle; a single spot, red
and ominous, within a square; a cross within three concentric
circles. Though he could not place them, they sent a certain thrill
of dread through the core of him. Some primitive part of his brain
instinctively recognized a mortal enemy.

And there, on either
side of him, were the Bonita twins. Long and lean, their amber eyes
reflecting the awful glare, they stood in a concentration of energy
Garner felt in a frisson along his exposed flesh.

Antonio spun him
roughly around, struck him again and again in strategic parts of his
body until the damning floppy disk was exhumed from his person.

Garner, crumpled on
the slick floor, tasted his own blood. His head lolled uncontrollably
with his pain. He sucked in a ragged breath and gasped. The heat of
the lamps caused the reek of human offal to rise from the floor like
spirits from the grave.

Antonio raised the
stolen floppy disk on high. "This contains all the
answers, names, dates, et cetera, et cetera," he said in the
ring- ing vengeful tones of a hanging judge hell-bent for blood. "Are
your eyes blind that you cannot see?"

"We know what
you were going to do with this highly inflammatory information,"
Heitor said. The scalpel moved, and having moved, pointed to the
disembodied head of Garner's handler. "We were provided with
confirmation."

"We were to be
condemned out of hand." Heitor crouched down in Garner's face.
Antonio hunkered down beside him.

"Like common
criminals," Antonio, pitched forward on the toes of his Keds,
whispered in Garner's ear.

Heitor must have
heard this because he said, "Listen to me. There is nothing
common about us."

Garner had begun to
sweat, and sweating, he prayed.

"Oye,
Heitor," Antonio said, "he's beginning to stink."

Heitor pushed his
head forward and sniffed. "Madre de mentiras, it is not
a good stink."

"Not like
blood," Antonio affirmed. "Not like the dying."

Now Heitor said
something in a singsong kind of voice. It was not a language
immediately known to Garner, whose fascination with arcane dialects
had led him to become a linguistics expert. But, as Heitor continued,
impressions came: of poverty-stricken hovels and packed-dirt streets,
of roosters crowing and mangy dogs prowling the edges of an emerald
jungle beyond which rose a modern industrial skyline. This was a
Paraguayan Indian dialect, Garner thought. Guarani.

And, suddenly, the
dripping designs on the walls came into sharp focus, and Garner felt
a sick, panicky feeling in the pit of his stomach. He knew something
of this obscure dialect. Linking it up to the bloody symbols, he
understood what the twins had been trying to tell him: death was the
least of what was to come.

"I want you to
understand this," Heitor said with the touch of his amber gaze
heavy and knowing on Garner. "The stones. You have heard of the
dark stones, haven't you?"

"We can see the
answer in your eyes," Antonio said. "The dark stones know."

His hand snaked out,
gripping Garner's bicep like a pincer. Without seeming effort he shot
to his feet, dragging Garner with him. Now he moved very fast,
hauling Garner across the room like a sack of wheat. The toe of
Garner's shoe caught in a glistening fold of intestine, dragging it
with him like an unwilling pup.

Antonio spun Garner,
slamming him so hard against the back wall that all the breath went
out of him, and Antonio was obliged to hold him upright. Garner was
surrounded by the largest of the three concentric circles of blood.
He imagined the bloody cross converged between his shoulder blades.
He shook his head to try to clear it.

Looking past the
Bonita twins, he saw the bloody symbol on the fourth wall. It had not
been visible before because it had been behind him. He saw two
curving lines that met to form what appeared to be the outline of an
eye. But it was unlike any Garner had seen before because it had two
pupils. It was eerie, like the orb of God, imagined but forbidden to
look upon.

Heitor, moving slowly
as a crocodile in the full heat of the day, fingered the shining
scalpel. "This is pure instinct now. You've left reason outside
in the night."

"Here's the meat
of it." Antonio's glistening teeth clacked beside Garner's ear.
"We will reveal to you the sole Law of the Universe: the further
a creature gets from pure instinct, the more flaws it possesses."

"Take man, for
instance," Heitor said. "¡Madre de mentiras!"

"Flatulent with
flaws," Antonio whispered. "His capacity to reason—his
obsession with it—has wiped out the instinct that made
him what he was."

"Once,"
Heitor said, advancing.

"No more,"
Antonio said.

"Comprende,
señor." Heitor stood squarely in front of Garner.
"For us, this is the game."

Antonio, up on his
toes, the backs of his legs taut, wedged Garner in. "The only
game in existence."

Heitor smiled. "The
one thing that means something to us," he said in the
peculiar dialect of the Guarani.

"The rest,"
Antonio said, "does not exist."

Now Heitor's lambent
gaze pinioned him, and Garner screamed. He didn't want to, but he
couldn't help himself. The stifling air in the tiny room seemed to
have gained a charge of electricity as the symbols on the walls came
to life. They appeared to pulse and shine, eclipsing even the fierce
glare of the photo floods. Was it hypnosis or magic? Garner, raised
and trained in the world of man's technological marvels, was inclined
toward skepticism. He had discovered in the course of previous
investigations that Haitians died of voodoo curses simply because
they believed in them. There was no more mystery to it than that.

As if Heitor could
read Garner's thoughts, he put two fingers on the side of Garner's
neck where his carotid artery pulsed, and Garner felt an involuntary
shudder go through him. It was as if an enormous boa constrictor had
settled on his shoulders, and a certain fear he could neither
understand nor control began to pulse like a drumbeat in his lower
belly.

Heitor was summoning
the dark stones.

Garner began to
fight, but it was far too late. Antonio's grip held him fast even
though he twisted and struck out with fisted hands and scrabbling
feet. Strangely, frighteningly, it dawned on him that the harder he
fought, the longer he held on, the better they loved it.

His heart seemed to
freeze in his chest. What was happening to him? It was as if
something he felt but could not define was boring through the backs
of his eyes into his brain. He felt as if he were on fire, and
involuntarily, his body began to dance a manic jig. He tried to pull
his gaze away but he couldn't. Horrified, he stared into those amber
eyes and found himself being subsumed by another presence. He felt
himself plummeting down like a parachutist through layers of ever
thickening cloud. And it was as if the airplane he left behind was
his own body, dwindling in size, grown dim and indistinct until it
was thoroughly obscured by those clouds. Still, Garner fought with
every ounce of strength left him.

They could have
kissed him for his heroic efforts. It was hours and hours later that
Heitor used the scalpel. Before that—for a long and ecstatic
time—there was simply no need.

DAY
ONE

1

Rachel Duke undressed
slowly and languorously. As she let her clothes fall to the floor,
she thought of Gideon's body. Gideon, who was just a cubicle away and
very soon would be closer than that. Her mind filled with images of
Gideon's long, lean musculature: sinuous biceps, sleek flanks, hot
butt. She was so in love with Gideon, she couldn't see straight. It
might have been a yucky cliche, but the truth was she never knew what
intimacy meant until she met Gideon. Rachel's parents weren't exactly
big on intimacy; God alone knew how they had had her.

But she was not in
her parents' world now; she was in Gideon's. Gideon was
eighteen—three years older than Rachel. Not that the age thing
mattered to either of them. Gideon's world was terrifying and
intoxicating and exhilarating all at once, and Rachel couldn't get
enough of it. She glanced at her watch: just past 2 a.m. and their
day was just beginning. The last bit of clothing slithered to her
ankles. She reached out, and as she pressed her palm to the bare wall
that separated her from the next cubicle, a tremor of intent went
through her. Gideon.

As she readied her
body, so she readied her mind.

Soon, Rachel, at the
Boneyard, was plugged in and turned on. She sat in the tiny cubicle.
Dim illumination played like sunlight cascading through densely
forested foliage. The drowsy sounds of birds and bees, the soft
burble of a nearby stream wafted on air perfumed with a combination
of cypress, juniper, and a hint of lime.

Rachel liked the
dirty-sexy-free feeling that came from being in heat outdoors with
the animals watching and knowing what you were doing. So she
had dialed up all this synthetic light and sound and smell through
the computer interface to which she was hooked up. The tangle of
humid odors came to her through a hopped-up network that spewed
aromatherapy essential oils into the cubicle.

She was naked, save
for odd-looking garments of black rubber strapped across her breasts,
over her groin, and around her thighs. Electrical leads ran from
points on these garments to the computer terminal, and a flexible
penislike projection rose up inside her.

The Boneyard was a
virtual sex parlor, one of the first of its kind. Gideon had turned
her on to it. It was a way to explore fantasies, to make real—or
virtually real—what was in your head without fear of AIDS or
other sexually transmitted diseases. It was, in short, the ultimate
analgesic for the new, severely anxious generation.

Rachel sat back, legs
spread, and watched through eyes slitted with a surfeit of drugs and
lust, the electronic image of Gideon. With the computer interface,
you could, of course, pick out anything to look at from the data bank
images. But she and Gideon preferred their own images, as least when
making virtual love to each other. When, on occasion, they interfaced
sexually with like-minded individuals a half-continent away, they
appeared on the monitor as all sorts of strange and wonderful people.

Rachel's right
forefinger 'moved the trackball mouse pointer higher up Gideon's
virtual inner thigh. At almost the same moment, jolts of pleasure
were transmitted through the leads in her garments to one erogenous
zone after another. With a little scream, Rachel came. Gideon,
knowing her so well, kept her at the peak for so long, her feet
lifted off the floor and her thighs began to shake uncontrollably
until her head lolled to one side.

Afterward, in the
sweaty interim between bouts, she snorted more coke. Gideon, in the
next cubicle, was doing the same, she knew. Somewhere in the dim
recesses of her mind Rachel knew it was too much, but she didn't
care. She wanted more, needed that much in order not to think about
her father, the flaming pyre of his death.

That particular
thought caught like a thorn in her throat. She wanted to dissolve in
tears but instead did more coke.

Was it true you never
stopped loving your daddy no matter what? Even after he was dead?
What part of him lived on in your heart like a dark seed, growing?

Part of her
desperately wanted her mother to burst in and rip her from the sexual
net, but her mother would never do it. For one thing, her mother
would never believe the kind of secret life she was living. For
another, she wouldn't know how to tackle it. Though she demanded to
know where Rachel was going at night, every night, coming home at
five, six in the morning, Rachel wouldn't tell her.

And still she let her
go. That was her way. See something nasty, something incomprehensible
and do the ostrich dance—stick your head in the sand. Why
the hell didn't she stop us? Rachel thought. Because the
time when she could is long past, and now it's far too late.
Then the feeling—that peculiar burning that began in her thighs
and crept upward took hold of her and felt too good. She
thought: Maybe once I wanted her to come and save me; but what if
I didn't? Because she was feeling that thorn in her throat
again, she did more coke. Because if she didn't surely she'd set
herself on fire. She'd tried, once, and Gideon had saved her. Had
Gideon done a good or a bad thing?

The conundrum made
her thirsty, and she gulped down some of the black lemonade she had
purchased in the parlor outside.

This so-called
parlor, the large common room of the Boneyard, was strewn with a
hodgepodge of comfy Art Deco furniture. There you could just chill,
rap a little while drinking a variety of coffees, cappuccinos,
lattes, or, as was becoming increasingly popular with the
kids who found their way here by word of mouth, a collection of
sodas, dark and thick with herbal tinctures, featuring names like
DOA, Skullcrusher, and BaddAss Brew. It was all loose-limbed,
informal, low-tech out front. But back here in the CyberCubes, the
surroundings were high-tech city.

She felt Gideon
suffusing her with pleasure again and she forgot about her father's
ghost. Groaning, she dropped her black lemonade to the countertop.
She used her mouse to give as good as she got, and soon enough,
panting, her breasts heaving, she came again.

Sweat sheened her and
she grabbed for the rest of her black lemonade.

She was in the midst
of her third orgasm when the last coke hit brought back layers of the
acid trip that had been hovering in the corners of her mind. She felt
as if Death had come into the room and scythed apart reality. She saw
herself from above, slumped and damp, glassy-eyed in the aftermath of
cyber-sex; she was also that person, dimly aware of a presence like
an angel hovering above her shoulder.

And the angel that
was Rachel left the room, as it always did, on its personal search to
find her uncle. He had been a cop when he and her mom had been so
pissed at each other they stopped talking. But Rachel had seen
pictures of him; she even had one hidden in her room. When she stared
at that photo she imagined what he might be like: strong, tough, big
as a bear, and smiling at her always. That she was conjuring up the
perfect father, who would love and protect her unconditionally, never
occurred to her.

She only knew that
she hated her mother for refusing to tell her where her uncle was.
Her mother actually seemed frightened that Rachel had become more and
more curious about him as Rachel had grown into a teenager. All
Rachel knew was if she had a brother she'd never treat him
like her mother treated hers.

Reality kept slipping
out of focus like a lighthouse in the fog. Now the cyber-stimulation
came again, but this time it felt like a hive full of wasps had
gotten under her skin.

When Rachel screamed
it sounded like a jet airplane revving its engines. She jumped up,
popping cables. Those that did not break, slewed her off balance, and
she fell into a bog of quicksand. She screamed again but her mouth
was full of sand. Her arms were a mile long, her legs like the wobbly
piers of a suspension bridge in an earthquake. Nothing seemed right
or good or…

A frightful bout of
nausea caught her like a steamshovel in the gut and she doubled over.
She retched so hard that she vomited blood. She blinked back tears
and found she couldn't see. Then she was doubled over again in an
agony so profound it all but paralyzed her. When it felt as if it
couldn't get any worse, pain exploded in the small of her back and
she spasmed into a fetal position.

The door to the
cubicle burst inward and sixteen images of Gideon followed themselves
inside. Rachel's mouth worked spastically and she tried to reach out,
but she'd lost all control of her limbs.

Then the world
shattered into a hundred-thousand razor-sharp fragments, taking her
with it into an oblivion where even her insupportable pain could not
be felt.

2

When the wahoo took
the line, Bennie Milagros cursed under his breath. "Shit,"
he said as the line spun out across the blue and gold sea, "I
wanted a sailfish."

Lew Croaker, his
steady gaze already on the dancing fish, cut engine speed and got
ready to maneuver. "Watch it," he said. "This is no
pussycat." The wahoo was a powerful fish that could move at such
astonishing speeds its first run often burned out the fisherman's
reel.

"You an' me, we
chow down on this wahoo at dusk." Bennie Milagros was braced
tensely near the stern of the boat. A tall man in his thirties, slim
as a flamenco dancer, he had a high domed forehead and long hair down
to his shoulders. He wore a white short-sleeve linen shirt, a pair of
red-and-black shorts that reached almost to his very hairy knees, and
reed huaraches. Tufts of wiry black hair waved from the knuckles of
his toes. The shorts were held up over his skinny hips by a belt with
an enormous oval silver buckle gaudily engraved with gold steer
horns. A Smith & Wesson .38 was tucked into his waistband. Bennie
was one of those rich Paraguayans who had come to South Florida to
spend money and be seen. If he also did a little business here and
there, so much the better. "Fighting fish like this reminds me.
There was this guapa, she was special. God hears me, I would
a married her if I could, but that woulda spoiled her, you know?"

"You mean it
would've spoiled you."

"You know,
Lewis, you are a very hard-hearted man." Bennie was grinning.
"But, no, listen to me. This guapa she was like a
magnificent wild animal, you break its spirit, it's a sin, you know?
I mean, you gotta treat a woman with respect. I look darkly upon men
who disrespect women." What, exactly, Bennie Milagros's business
might be wasn't known to any official entity of the United States.
Croaker suspected that was just as well.

"So this guapa,
what could I do? I respected her, kept her spirit alive here."
He thumped his chest with his free hand. "But God hears me, I am
the poorer for being without her." He flicked the rod. "Now,
magnanimous man that I am, I am willing to share with you this piece
of philosophy. I swear on the soul of my dead mother, your cock'll
grow feathers the minute you meet a guapa like this one.
Pearl in a fuckin' oyster, believe me." Bennie grunted as the
wahoo struck outward and the reel began to spin madly. The eight-foot
rod flexed severely as the fish took off, and Croaker turned the
wheel over hard, heading Captain Sumo away from Alligator
Reef. The reef dropped off sharply, and they were soon in about three
hundred feet of water, three miles out from Islamorada, one of the
middle Florida Keys.

The ocean stretched
blue and green, the white-gold sparkle of the sun lacing the wave
crests. It was cool and clean out here, and Croaker loved it; the
rime of salt borne on breeze and spray coated human skin and boat
lacquer alike.

Bennie worked the
fiberglass rod—glass, in fisherman's parlance. "But, shit,
I wanted that fuckin' sailfish."

"I feel a need
for it in my soul, understand? Maybe you don't." Bennie risked
turning his flat face toward Croaker. "You Anglos, you have some
weird fuckin' ideas 'bout spirituality. See, it's all, like,
televangelists caught with their pants down an' after-death
experiences an', like, alien abductions. An' you see all that shit in
the National Enquirer so much that's what defines
spirituality for you. You gents just don't get it, an'
that's why you're all crawling over each other to find it." He
reeled out some line. His coffee-colored eyes flashed with salacious
good humor. He was a handsome man, his pockmarked cheeks making him
seem all the more powerful.

Croaker slowed some
more and turned to starboard. This fish was going to get away unless
they were both very careful. "Don't lump me into your great
Anglo stew."

"Oh, yeah."
Bennie flicked his wrist, began to reel in line. "I forgot
myself for a minute. You're an ex-cop. NYPD detective lieutenant."
He shook his head. "Dirty business."

"More than you
could imagine," Croaker said. Fifteen years prowling the filthy
underbelly of the city's streets had made Croaker immune to life.
Even little pleasures had dissolved like wet snow in the city's acid
gutters. He'd spent early mornings washing the blood of murder
victims and violent perps off his hands until he'd scrubbed his
fingertips raw. And when he had come in out of the slime, he'd been
met with a cynical web of Police Plaza corruption between politicos
and penthouse residents, played like a game of squash where no one
worked up a sweat. Soon he'd been driven back onto the streets again,
trying to wash away what would never come off.

"He's doubled
back!" Bennie tensed, reeling in line like a madman. Croaker
whipped the wheel around. Bennie was a fine fisherman; Croaker never
had to baby-sit him as he did with many of his well-heeled clients
who, jaded by afternoons cell-phoning from the golf course, had
decided sport fishing made for a power experience.

"Here he comes!"

Croaker could see the
wahoo's narrow wake, knew Bennie was right—the fish was making
a run at the boat. "Make sure you take up every inch of slack!"
he shouted as he goosed the engines to life, moving Captain Sumo
out of the way of the wahoo's charge.

Bennie was reeling
like crazy, his eyes following the wahoo's silver wake, sharp as a
knife. At the last instant Croaker could see that the wahoo was going
to try to go under the boat, and turned again. The wahoo jumped
instead, and then ran. Bennie's reel spun madly.

"Oh, good one!"
Bennie cried. "Yeah, well, you an' I, we got something in common
besides loving South Florida and fishing." He took one hand off
the rod for an instant, struck himself in the midsection.

"Yeah? What's
that?"

The wahoo chose that
moment for a spectacular leap, then began another run. Bennie was
almost jerked off his feet. He took one lurching step, fetched his
hip bone against the rail. With a powerful sweeping motion, he lifted
the tip of the rod as the line spun out. "Lotta life yet in this
one," he grunted.

Croaker once again
altered the boat's speed, coming to port.

With the wahoo more
or less under control for the moment, Bennie said, "We both know
what it's like to have enemies."

"You've got to
be joking." Croaker laughed. "I'm like the manatee. I've
got no natural enemies."

"Really? You, an
ex-cop, work now and again when the mood prevails with the elite
Feds, what're they called, the Anti-Cartel Task Force. Anyone
official inquires, they don't know you, you don't know them. Your
name ain't on their books, so who's to say who's lyin'."

"You know that
for a fact?"

"It's a guess,
what d'you think?" Bennie grinned as he worked his rod. "Also,
word is you did some mighty fancy footwork with the mob. You got
friends—and enemies—in high places, Lewis, don't lead me
to believe otherwise." Bennie shrugged. "I know what I need
to 'bout you," he said.

"Where'd you
hear all this nasty stuff?" Croaker asked.

"Guys I play
mah-jongg with." Bennie had a laugh like a macaw's startled
screech. He flashed a quick glance at Croaker.

The wahoo was tiring,
no doubt about it. Its runs were shorter and less powerful. Bennie
definitely had him under control. It wouldn't be long before they
could gaff him aboard. "I know something about that mechanical
left hand of yours. I know it ain't no handicap. Far fuckin' from it.
Also, I know how you came to South Florida baby-sitting a guapa
witness to multiple murder, and when the case was over, you threw in
your shield prematurely and settled down with the guapa.
What was her name?"

"You tell me."

Bennie shrugged. "She
was a model, right? Now she's off in Paris, Milan, fuck knows where.
An' who cares, anyways? She sure as shit ain't here. Her idea of life
was different than yours. Just like your Mafia princess back on Long
Island. She was beyond the law and she was married. Ooo, I
like the size of your cojones, señor!" He shook
his head. "God hears me, the guapas can be cruel when
they want to be."

"They weren't
cruel," Croaker said, despite himself. "Like you said, they
were not for me."

Bennie ignored
Croaker's comment. He flicked the glass rod, hurting the fish more,
weakening it further. "So you came back to this forty-foot
Hatteras and the sport fishing charter company you'd started years
ago, after you realized the obvious: that the thing with the Mafia
princess was, like, unworkable."

"Very
impressive."

"Didn't do it to
impress you," Bennie said, reeling in the wahoo. "Did it to
make a point 'bout the kind of man you are an' the kind of man I am."

The wahoo's wake was
wide now. Exhausted from the fight, it was almost on its side.
Croaker threw the boat into neutral, then climbed out of the cockpit
and went to fetch the short, stout gaff.

As Croaker came up
beside him, Bennie's coffee-colored eyes slid his way. "You an'
me we're the same, deep down inside, is what I think."

Croaker held the gaff
vertically, as if it were a medieval halberd. Next to Bennie's
slender frame his bearlike bulk seemed overpowering. He had the
handsome weather-beaten face of a cowboy; Robert Mitchum tall in the
saddle. Sunlight flared in his gray eyes. His artificial left hand,
made of black polycarbonate, stainless-steel, iridescent blue
titanium, and matte-gray boron components, looked like a knight's
mailed fist. "And what kind of man is that?"

"Very fuckin'
careful." Bennie grinned fiercely as he handed off the rod to
Croaker while he took possession of the gaff. It was his fish to land
all the way into the boat; that was one of Croaker's rules of the
sea. "Like, here's a for instance. You come down here your rep
precedes you. You begin to do work for the Feds, helping the Coast
Guard out now an' then, wrapping up drug smugglers they can't get a
handle on. Did a lotta tracking in the 'glades." He meant the
Everglades. "Nasty kinds of stuff in there, gators, crocs,
snakes, I mean to tell you. But you, very careful, you learned your
way around. Like a fuckin' native. Like—what's the name of
those Indians, not the Seminoles, who came down later on from
somewhere north, right?"

"Georgia. They
came in the eighteenth century."

"Yeah,"
Bennie said. "So anyway, not them. I mean the original

Florida gents, got
whacked like the Indians in Mexico and Peru by the fuckin' Anglos
hornin' in, taking whatever the hell they wanted."

"The Calusas."

"Right. You hit
the 'glades like, you know, a fuckin' Calusa. Careful"
Bennie stretched over the side, swinging the gaff down. He was trying
to find the gill slit to hook into. "Lots of evil happenin' in
South Florida, I don't have to enumerate to you. Pays t'be'specially
careful down here."

"And you'd know
about being careful, Bennie."

"Sure I would.
What I do in life—" Bennie paused as he made another pass
at the wahoo's elusive gill slit. "When it comes right down to
it I don't really do anything at all. I'm a fixer. People have
problems an' I fix 'em. Business problems, personal problems—I
fix 'em all. An' not like you think—I see that look on your cop
face. You seen I'm carrying, I know what's on your mind. But you're
wrong. The piece is for protection only." He spread his hands.
"I negotiate. I find a way to make a settlement." He
hunched forward, his voice lower, more throaty. "See, my
experience has been that people—no matter how stupid, stubborn,
or prideful—are motivated by the same thing: they don't want to
lose. I show 'em how they won't lose."

Bennie wiped salt
spray out of his eyes with the back of his arm. He was concentrating
on the movements of the wounded wahoo. Hurling itself against the
boat hull, it still had a bit of life left in it. Finding the gill
slit at last, he bent over farther, grunting.

"Ah, shit!"
The wahoo had flicked one last time and the gaff's hook ripped
through skin and flesh. "I'll never get this part clean."
Ribbons of blood darkened the water.

Bennie was balanced
precariously on the top rail. "The day I need help landing a
fuckin' wahoo—"

The rest of his
sentence was lost in a guttural scream. The water around the wahoo,
already dark with uncoiling blood, turned black, then a sickening
white. With a great roar, the water purled upward and, foaming madly,
revealed the head of a tiger shark.

"What th' fuck?"
Bennie shouted.

It was huge—over
a thousand pounds for sure, Croaker estimated. The jaws gaped open
inches from Bennie's hands. The cavity looked as big as the Lincoln
Tunnel. As the massive jaws clashed shut, the gaff snapped in two and
part of the wahoo disappeared in a bright maelstrom of flying blood
and churning water.

Bennie tried to
scramble back, but his belt buckle got hung up on the rail. For a
moment he hung there, his upper torso suspended out over the water.

Croaker extruded
stainless-steel nails from the tips of the polycarbonate and titanium
fingers of his left hand, slashed them horizontally, snapping the
monofilament line. He dropped the glass rod to the pitching deck as,
with a sickening lurch, the tiger shark surfaced again, coming right
at Bennie.

"¡Madre
de Dios!" Bennie's white face was flecked with fish gore.
Scales refracted miniature rainbows off his cheekbones, nose, and
eyebrows. His wide, staring eyes reflected the ugly gray-brown snout
of the shark.

Bennie's head was
directly above the gaping jaws, and still the shark rose, gripped by
a frenzy of blood lust. Croaker used his right hand to grab Bennie by
the back of his shirt collar, hauling backward. But that damn silver
buckle was caught beneath the top rail.

In desperation,
Croaker shouldered in beside Bennie. Bending over the rail, he swung
his left hand down in a flat arc. Sunlight glittered off the back
of,-his artificial hand. The extruded stainless-steel nail of his
thumb pierced the shark's right eye, while the other four buried
themselves in its snout. It was the only part of the shark's anatomy
that seemed sensitive. Croaker remembered stories of divers who
claimed they'd fended off attacks by slamming its nose. He prayed
they were true.

The tiger shark
thrashed, its powerful tail churning the water, the flailing of its
thick body rocking the boat. Its sandpaper hide scraped against the
hull, stripping off layers of paint and wood. Half-blinded and
blood-maddened it rose vertically a third time, then crashed
downward. Croaker's nails were embedded deep within monstrous flesh
and cartilage, In reflex, he'd curled them and now couldn't extract
them. The shark's abrupt downward rush threatened to take him with
it.

Bennie, who had been
struggling with his buckle, lurched free and, taking hold of
Croaker's sweat-soaked shirt with one hand, drew the .38 Smith &
Wesson from his waistband and pumped six rounds into the shark's
head. He was aiming for the brain, but it was so small and so well
armored he couldn't be sure he'd hit it.

Either by malevolent
design or by simple reflex, the shark leaped out of the water again.
Could Bennie have been such a poor shot, even at point-blank range or
was the prehistoric beast's body unaware as yet that it was dead? No
matter. The ruined snout burst upward in an eruption of pink spume.
The leading edge of its double-rowed teeth grazed the inside of
Bennie's right forearm and he gasped. He was so startled he dropped
the .38 as if it were a hot iron. It disappeared down the shark's
throat. Then Croaker, bunching his fingers, tore his steel nails
clear through cartilage and flesh, ripping open the shark's snout in
a long, bloody rent that went from end to end.

It was dead. For sure
it was dead, with six .38 bullets in it and blood pumping out of it
like a fountain. But Croaker had seen too many landed sharks presumed
dead come to life with tragic results. The beast continued its
psychotic thrashing, lashing out with tail and mouth, more dangerous
than ever. Croaker turned and, grabbing a boat hook, proceeded to jam
the brass end of it through the shark's good eye.

The boiling water
slowly subsided. Blood spread like an oil slick from a damaged
tanker. Turning slowly on its side, spinning like a dying sun in
space, the shark gradually sank beneath the ocean, leaving nothing in
its wake. To the very end its jaws were working spastically.

"Goddamnit,"
Bennie said, leaning against the railing. The color was already
returning to his pockmarked cheeks. "The sonuvabitch took my
wahoo and my gun."

As soon as they
docked, Croaker drove Bennie to the Fisherman's Hospital to get the
shark wound tended to. It wasn't much more than a shallow gash, but
you never knew. It was on the inside of Bennie's right arm and had
come very close to the large median vein.

On their way to
dinner, Croaker and Bennie drove through a late afternoon chewy with
brine and the iodine of dried seaweed. They were in Croaker's 1969
flamingo and white T-bird, which, Bennie loved to say, wallowed like
a pig but rode at top speed like a magic carpet. Bennie, his right
arm resplendent with yellow disinfectant and squooshy gauze, used his
cellular phone to call a woman named Maria. Croaker heard him making
plans for her to meet him at ten that night. Bennie gave her a Mile
Marker number, which was as much of an address as you were going to
get in the Keys. "It's right off U.S. One, Maria. On the left.
You can't miss it. An' about Sonia, she's cool with it? Good."

He turned to Croaker
as he hung up. "Now when the guapas show up don't,
like, get your head turned around."

Croaker laughed.
"Hey, Bennie, since when do I care who you go out with?"

Bennie grinned.
"Maria's my date. Sonia's for you, bright boy."

Croaker shook his
head. "No go. You know I'm not into that scene."

"What scene?
What?" Bennie spread his hands expressively. "Jesus
Christo, Lewis, this girl's no whore." He gestured with his
chin. "You recall that story I told you 'bout the guapa
stole my heart?"

"I remember
everything you tell me, Bennie." He grinned. "Pearl in the
oyster."

"Hey, don't
laugh, man." Bennie settled himself in his seat. "You think
I introduce you to just any woman? No fuckin' way." He sniffed
the yellow disinfectant on his injured arm and wrinkled his nose in
distaste. "Sonia's someone's pearl, let me tell you. Could be
she's yours."

A formation of
pelicans, long beaks tucked close to their gray chests, swooped low
across the water toward their nests among the mangroves. Croaker
followed their flight, looking out over the pale turquoise shallows
of Florida Bay that led to Everglades National Park. Locals called it
the backcountry, in this area alone, a six-hundred-square-mile warren
of waterways, basins, and inlets between mangrove islets, and
rookeries for tropical birds, that were too small and numerous to be
counted or fully mapped. He'd fished many times for trout and snook
and bonefish in the purling waterways where, at the dawning of the
century, the Calusa and Tequesta silently paddled their buttonwood
canoes. It was there that he'd met Stone Tree, a Seminole who had
become his guide in the Everglades.

Stone Tree, tall as a
Calusa, thin as a length of whittled wood, slowly brought into focus
for Croaker the moments of sublime back-country beauty that few
people ever saw or understood. Things here can keep you alive and
healthy for decades, Stone Tree told him as they stalked strange
flora and fauna through hardwood hammocks and coastal prairies.
Things here can kill you in a matter of minutes. It's all a
matter of knowledge. In that self-contained environment a man
could lose himself to the rest of the world until the day he died.

Not ten minutes
later, Croaker and Bennie were tucked away in Papa Joe's Tiki Bar, a
second-floor crow's nest overlooking the western expanse of the
mangrove-woven bay. Papa Joe's was an Islamor-ada institution, part
bar, part restaurant, part fishing marina, and all hangout.

"It was like
looking into infinity." Bennie's hand clasped a tall beer glass
beaded with moisture. "Like understanding for the first time
that there are forces beyond your control, forces so primitive and
urgent they're, like, incomprehensible."

He was talking about
the tiger shark. The bar, crowded with garrulous regulars, was like a
color-drenched reef behind them. In front, the oblate sun was setting
over the water. It was that gorgeous Keys color, neither orange nor
red, but part of both. A few clouds, ungainly as a clown's whiskers,
floated by overhead, and a couple of motorboats slashed their way
across the luminescent skin of the bay. A handful of laughing gulls
set up shop behind the restaurant on the dock below, where the small
fishing skimmers rocked gently at their moorings.

The sky near the
horizon was turning that peculiar shade of green found nowhere else
but in the tropics. Everyone was standing, staring at the sunset.
Down here, it was more than a ritual; it was a basic part of life,
like drinking and fishing.

As the last curve of
the sun dropped below the horizon there was a burst of spontaneous
applause. Then everyone got back to drinking and socializing. The
Keys were the great equalizer. Status was nonexistent here. It didn't
matter worth a damn whether you had money or not, whether in some
other part of the world you counseled presidents or commanded a
seven-figure salary. Here, you were no better or worse than the next
person.

Bennie, dressed in
dark raw silk shorts and a blindingly bright aloha shirt, was in a
serious mood. "That fuckin' shark was, like, symbolic,
right? Symbolic of what the world is and what we never can be. See
what I mean?" He made horns of his forefingers, pointed them at
his temples. "We got all these smarts, we got opposable thumbs."
He wiggled his thumbs as an exhibit. "We invented weapons that
can level cities, weapons that can kill people but not buildings. We
got E equals M C fuckin' squared." This was not the street-smart
cocky businessman most people got to see, but the other Bennie
Milagros, a deep thinker, a kind of philosopher who questioned
everything in life. Croaker knew instinctively that he was privileged
to be seeing this side of the man, just as he knew some unspoken bond
was being woven between the two of them.

"What I mean is,
all these things they don't mean shit to the shark." Bennie
finished his beer in one long gulp. "I swear, Lewis, we almost
got our asses chewed to meat out there today."

Croaker got more
beers as the waitress came with plates of whole grilled pompano from
the restaurant below. He said, "It was a force of nature, like a
storm or a tidal wave, nothing, more nothing less."

Bennie stared at the
fish made fragrant with fresh rosemary and thyme and Croaker could
see the look on his face. He was reminded, as Croaker was, that if
not for this particular force of nature they'd be eating wahoo now.

Bennie laughed
sourly, but he was watching the spectral outlines of the brown
pelicans on their perches atop the pier pilings. The frightening
encounter with the shark had set off something inside him. "I
tell you, Lewis, there's something out there waiting for us."

Just after ten
o'clock, Maria appeared with Sonia right behind her. Maria was a
willowy South American with a massive swirl of black hair, black
eyes, and the manner of a woman born to money. Sonia, also Latina,
was tall, very slender with thick layers of dark brown hair, and
startling hazel eyes. She moved with a certain energy and an
unselfconsciousness that was immediately endearing. It was Croaker's
experience that women who used their beauty like a bank account soon
proved dull or self-involved or both.

At Croaker's
suggestion, they went to the Shark Bar, a place both he and Bennie
knew. It was a fairly new club on Islamorada, a funky but hip place.
It featured salsa bands, a tropical setting, and, best of all, it
catered to the Latin American crowd down from South Beach for sport
fishing. Which was good for Croaker's business. But he had another
reason for hanging out there and he saw that reason standing head and
shoulders above the crowd.

"Hey, Rafe!"
he called.

Rafe Roubinnet, owner
of the Shark Bar, waved and grinned like a man spotting an old
college roommate.

"How you been?"
Roubinnet thundered. "Must be grand, 'cause I hear you've been
out on Captain Sumo almost nonstop for a month," His
laughter was infectious. "Been reeling in the charismatic
mega-vertebrates?"

Croaker, with Sonia's
hand in his, maneuvered through the crowd toward the restaurateur.
"You bet. The big fish are running and my client list keeps
getting longer. I can't complain."

Roubinnet was very
tall, lean, and lined from tropical sun and wind, his skin dark as
mahogany. He wore white jeans and a midnight blue T-shirt on which
was printed in large white Gothic letters: no recreational whining.
With his dark, thick hair, bright blue eyes, and rugged good looks,
Croaker supposed he could have been a model. But Roubinnet seemed too
addicted to the slow and easy pace of the Keys.

"Ai de mi,
who's the beautiful lady?" Roubinnet cried. "Bring her on
over here, compadre!"

Croaker and Roubinnet
had a special relationship. Croaker had gotten a lot of business from
the Shark Bar ever since he had relocated from Marco Island on the
Gulf Coast. It was his home away from home; he was known there, and
well liked, not to mention much admired. Not long ago, he'd ended a
spate of death threats against Roubinnet by tracking down a local
wise guy who'd been hired by a couple of Miami mobsters wanting a
piece of Roubinnet's lucrative action.

Roubinnet, grinning
hugely, kissed Sonia's hand, then clasped Croaker's right hand in
his, and gave it a squeeze that was as professional as it was
powerful. You could tell many things about a man from the way he
shook your hand. Before his incarnation as a restaurateur, Roubinnet
had been mayor of Miami for a term. Being half-Hispanic hadn't done
him any harm, and having Bennie backing him with money and influence
hadn't either.

"It's good to
see you," Roubinnet said in that special way of his that made
you believe that you were the center of his attention, "Spending
too much time on that boat of yours. You've got to kick back a
little. Relax. Like now."

Someone called to him
and he waved. "Minute!" He clapped Croaker on the shoulder.
"Don't be such a stranger, compadre. Take advantage of
the hospitality of the house. Your dinero's no good here."
Then he was striding through the crowd, shaking hands, laughing as he
listened to bits of gossip delivered up by his best customers.

"He's some
character," Sonia said.

"Comes on strong
but he's a good guy. Big heart and a straight shooter." Croaker
smiled. "Drink?"

"Right now I'd
rather dance."

"It will be my
pleasure," he said, as he led her out onto the dance floor. "So.
Sonia. Is that your first and last name, like Madonna?"

"Madonna's
over," Sonia said. "So is having one name." They swung
to a sensuous merengue beat. "My last name's Villa-Lobos. Like
the music composer." She smiled. "I like the way you dance.
Very, you know, liquid. Reminds me of my brother, Carlito. I used to
dance with him like this when we were little."

"I learned from
the best," Croaker said. "I hung around Spanish Harlem up
in New York so much the Latinos finally got used to me."

He watched her move
to the music's insistent beat. "Why did you come tonight?"

She looked at him
curiously, her arms hooked around his shoulders as their bodies
carved out patterns on the floor. "Because Bennie asked."

Now he was curious.
"Just like that?"

Sonia looked at him
as if he ought to know. Then she laughed. "Bennie, Maria, and I
all come from Asuncion. We know each other a long time."

The band took a break
and the dance floor emptied toward the bar, the front of which was
fiberglass molded and realistically painted to look like a giant
shark. A set of jaws from a real great white shark, its wicked teeth
intact, jutted from the wood-paneled wall behind the bar. It was
replicated in the mirrors, which reflected the exuberant, casually
dressed crowd. Everything was muy casual in the Keys.

"Would you like
a drink?" Croaker asked.

Sonia nodded. "But
afterward I want to dance some more." Her eyes sparkled. "It's
not every night I get to be with an Anglo who knows how to merengue."

"You like to
merengue."

"It's a very
sexy dance," she said.

He took her hand,
threading through the raucous throng. Recorded music came on. Jimmy
Buffett, and then a succession of well-known salsa artists. Elbowing
his way to the bar, he shouted his order to Frank, one of the three
bartenders working that night. He got a frozen margarita for Sonia,
another mescal for himself. What the hell, he thought.

They headed away from
the bar, across the packed room and out of the glass doors onto a
wide wooden patio. In true South Florida tradition the frigid air
inside became an instant memory as the humidity hit them with a moist
slap. They could smell the mangrove hanging rank and heavy in the
spangled night. A bed of stars arched overhead. The soft lap of the
waves was everywhere, the frenetic scene behind them seemed a million
miles away. You didn't even have to close your eyes to believe you
were walking on the far edge of the universe.

They looked up. The
stars seemed to burn more brightly in the velvet sky. In the distance
the lights of the Keys glowed like pearls around a beautiful neck.

"Are you going
to ask me to have sex with you?" Sonia asked.

Croaker laughed,
taken aback. "I hadn't quite gotten around to thinking about
it."

"That's a
relief," she said. "Because I don't do that kind of thing,
even for Bennie."

"I think he
knows that," Croaker said, recalling Bennie's description of
Sonia as a pearl in an oyster.

Her eyes danced in
amusement. "Don't get me wrong. I mean I

like sex. But I
prefer to choose my partners. And, anyway, these days, well, there's
a dark side to it and I worry about … things." She took a
breath, let it out very slowly.

"Like AIDS,"
he said.

She stared out at the
ocean; tears glittered in her eyes. "A friend of mine is very
ill."

That's all she needed
to say. Suddenly, it seemed very important to be at her side. "I
was eighteen when my father died," he said. "He was a cop;
I became one because of him. It seemed right to follow his example
because he was so moral. All the evil in the world, it seemed, tried
to get to him, and he resisted it all. He knew what it meant to be a
defender of the law." Croaker, holding her hand, imagined his
father sitting beside him, laughing with his eyes crinkling and his
hat pushed back to the crown of his head.

He looked into
Sonia's beautiful eyes and said, "He died violently, shot in the
back in an alley not three blocks from where we lived. He was killed
by someone he knew and trusted. In the end, that was the only way his
enemies could get to him, by corrupting someone close to him."

He took the point of
Sonia's chin gently in the crook of his finger. "He was a good
man; he didn't deserve to die before his time. He didn't deserve to
die like that." He searched her eyes. "I think maybe it's
the same with your friend, isn't it?"

She nodded, tears
spilling from her eyes. When he wiped them away, she laughed, and the
soft, musical sound sluiced away the dark rustle of anxiety that had
built up around them. She stood very close to him, her eyes and lips
glittering in explosions of refracted light from the interior of the
club. "I don't know what I expected tonight, but… maybe I
wasn't really expecting to find someone."

She put her drink on
the wooden railing, cupped his left hand in hers, turning the blue
metal over in the light. "Tell me about this."

"It's actually a
biomechanical contraption," he said. He'd long since gotten over
being self-conscious about it. "My hand got sliced off in a
fight when I was in Japan and a team of microengineers put together
this prototype. It runs on a pair of lithium batteries, but believe
it or not there's a lot of me inside it. There are boron bones,
titanium joints, and stainless-steel nails, but my own artificially
regenerated nerves, tendons, and sinews are in there as well. But
they're so well protected, I could literally put the hand in fire
without feeling any more than a pleasant warmth."

Her fingers glided
over the matte-gray polycarbonate palm, the titanium fingers with
uncommon delicacy. "Does it need repairs, like a car?"

"Periodically,
I'm supposed to go back to Tokyo to let the surgical team make
adjustments, but I haven't the inclination. I just change the
batteries once every six months." He looked at her rapt face,
and hoped she wasn't one of those women who got hung up on the thing.
It'd happened before. "It's been seven years and I suspect they
want to replace it with a newer model." He shrugged. "One
of these days I'll get around to it."

"Or maybe you'll
just keep what you have," Sonia said. "Maybe you're content
just the way you are."

With a start Croaker
realized there was more than a grain of truth to that, and he nodded,
grateful at this moment to be with her.

He was aware of the
intensity in her eyes as she touched the tip of each finger of his
flesh-and-blood right hand. "I like hands," she said.
"Hands tell you a lot. They can't lie." She traced the
lines on his palm, felt the thick calluses. "You have worker's
hands. Strong and capable."

"That comes from
being brought up in Hell's Kitchen," he said. "That's a
real rough part of Manhattan's West Side. You had to be hard as nails
or the hoods would take you apart."

"I know what
that's like." Her thumb pressed against his. "I was raised
in the roughest part of Asuncion." Her eyes got dark. "I
learned two things there: to be thick-skinned and to be patient.
Being patient is hardest of all, don't you think? It doesn't seem to
be an innate human trait, that's why it's so hard to learn."

Suddenly, he seemed
as tongue-tied as a kid on his first date. He remembered being with
Stone Tree. They were standing in still backcountry water, the sun
perched on the edge of the horizon like a demure girl. Without
seeming to have moved at all Stone Tree reached into the water and
pulled up a perch. He gutted it, spit it on a green branch. The
morning was filled with pearly light and the perfect smell of
roasting fish. A roseate spoonbill flew by, its unearthly pink haloed
by the sun. Stone Tree said, Life, at Us best, is pure and sweet.
Moments like this, caught in your hand, stored in your heart, is all
a man needs. And before Croaker knew what he was doing, he was
kissing Sonia. An instant after he felt her lips opening under his,
he pulled guiltily away. "I didn't mean to do that."

Her eyes were huge,
the irises very pale. "But I mean to do this."
Putting one hand at the nape of his neck she drew him gently but
forcefully until their lips touched. Then she melted against him, her
lips opening and her tongue wrapped around his. As if she were a
night-blooming flower, he was filled with her scent. It was a heady
sensation and he breathed deeply. A quick surge of music made his
heart pump all the harder. "Lew?" A light, female voice.

Not now, he
thought. Can I be unlucky enough to run into an old girlfriend
just at this moment? With extreme reluctance, he broke away from
Sonia. Keeping a firm hold on her hand, he turned to face the woman
who had come through the glass doors from the interior of the Shark
Bar. "Hello, Lew."

Croaker stared at the
woman, his mind refusing to work. "Matty." It was as if it
were encased in a block of ice. He felt his stomach give a quick
flip-flop.

Matty, beautiful,
regal as a princess, was looking from him to Sonia and back again.
She wore a very expensive dress in matte black jersey and a string of
diamonds at her throat. She was so impeccably made-up she looked as
if she'd just emerged from a beauty salon. In her formal designer
splendor she looked totally out of place. "I know this must come
as something of a shock—"

"Christ, you can
say that again."

Matty's gaze flicked
quickly to Sonia and, as if she were embarrassed, whipped back to his
stunned face. "I'm sorry to intrude but I've got to talk to you.
I didn't want to leave a message at the marina and they said you'd
probably be here some time tonight." Clearly nervous, her words
came out in a tangled rush.

"You said you
never wanted to speak to me again." Croaker was aware he was
gripping Sonia's hand as if it were a life preserver in high seas. He
could hardly hear the conversation over the pounding of his heart.
"That was, what? Twelve years ago?"

"Fourteen,"
Matty said. "Fourteen years, one month, seventeen days."
She tried to smile but failed miserably. She took a deep breath. "It
was at Rachel's christening."

"How could I
forget," he said bleakly.

"She's fifteen
now."

"And not a word
from either of you in all this time."

"I'm not aware
that you ever tried to contact us."

"After what you
told me I had no reason to think you'd want to see me."

"Okay. I
deserved that."

He stared at her
stonily.

"Lew—"

"What is it? You
made your bed. You married Donald Duke. That life's everything you
wanted, or so you took the trouble to tell me over and over."

Matty's eyes were
full of tears. "That was a long time ago."

"Lew,"
Sonia broke in. "What's going on?"

"Everything's
changed," Matty went on, as if she hadn't heard Sonia. "Donald
walked out on me."

Watching her
expression, he said, "What do you want from me, Matty? Am I
supposed to be surprised or even sympathetic?" He was painfully
aware that he was roiled with emotion as the past came rushing back.
He had to turn it aside. "Oh, yes, how thoughtless. The
introductions. Sonia Villa-Lobos, this is Matty Duke. My sister."

In the stunned
silence, he let go of Sonia's hand. "Eighteen years ago she met
a man named Donald Duke."

"Lew, don't—"
Matty pleaded.

"He was a
corporate raider, a shark who fed off other people's misfortunes. He
plundered one company after another, selling off the divisions,
firing people."

"Christ,"
Matty said, "you talk about him like he was some kind of
criminal."

Croaker concentrated
on Sonia's face as his anger once again bound up his heart. "He
maneuvered people he didn't like out of boardrooms, hounded them out
of New York, maybe even taking pleasure in doing so."

"What proof?"
Matty said. "There wasn't any."

His eyes blazed.
"Nevertheless, my sister married him. She was dazzled by the
lifestyle, isn't that right, Matty?" Matty bit her lip and
looked away. "Of course it is. She wouldn't listen to my
warnings; in fact, they incensed her. I told her what kind of man she
was marrying. But she turned everything around. She accused me of
being jealous of Donald's wealth and position. She made fun of me
because I was a cop and I saw the world through a cop's pea-brained
eyes." He cocked his head. "Wasn't that the word you used,
Matty? And then you said, what was it? You're pathetic, Lew. You'll
end up like Pop, lying dead facedown in an alley." He shook his
head. "The lifestyle, the money and power were all more
important than her own family. She met Duke and she was suddenly
embarrassed by her family, by where she had been brought up."

"That isn't
true!" Matty protested.

"Which part
isn't true, Matty? Tell me." He watched her face. "At the
wedding you gushed over Donald's wealthy friends while we sat alone
and isolated. You never brought him home. Mama only wanted to cook
for him, but you never gave her the chance."

"Stop it!"
Matty cried in anguish. "You don't understand anything."

Croaker was not to be
deterred. "Worse, you kept Rachel from us as punishment and Ma
died without ever having a chance to get to know her granddaughter.
You cut us out and it broke Mama's heart. Not to mention mine!"

He turned to Sonia.
"At Rachel's christening, I'd finally had it, and I told her
what I thought of her husband and her new life."

"And I meant
every word of it." A kind of crazy pulse was beating in his head
as remembrance flooded back. "That's when she told me she never
wanted to speak to me again," he said to Sonia. Then he rounded
on Matty. "Now aren't you glad you came back?"

Without another word
to either woman, he opened the glass door, strode through the crowded
club, past Bennie and Maria, clamped in fiery embrace on the dance
floor, and out into the sea of cars in the asphalt parking lot.

It wasn't long before
Bennie Milagros came dancing down the Shark Bar's front steps. Above
the entrance, the front half of a gargantuan fierce-looking molded
plastic shark thrust skyward in a plume of fake foam. It was tacky,
but Rafe Roubinnet said it made him laugh every time he looked at it.

Bennie moved aside to
allow a couple of South American businessmen and their women to get
by, then went purposefully across the lot to where Croaker sat behind
the wheel of the T-bird.

He climbed into the
car beside Croaker and handed him a drink.

"Here, I thought
you could use this."

Croaker accepted it
without comment.

Bennie extracted a
long Cuban cigar from his breast pocket, took some time with the
ritual of lighting it. He smelled of mescal and male sweat. A hint of
Maria's perfume clung to him like pink clouds cling to cherubim.
Pretty soon the cigar smoke masked it all.

"Regarding you,
I think that, you know, a bat outta hell woulda left the club in
better shape." He puffed on his cigar, not looking at Croaker,
not looking at anything. "Sonia is steely-eyed, so you must've
somehow gotten to her; she's upset for you. Maria's kibitzing with
her, and me, I'm out my ecstatic dancing partner, maybe for the rest
of the evening." Another languorous puff. "Oh, yeah, I
almost forgot. There's this juicy guapa askin' everyone in
there where you went. God hears me, she's got some kinda figure on
her."

Above their heads,
the palm fronds clattered like an unruly chorus in concert with the
high chirps of the tree frogs.

Someone bursting out
of the club caught their attention. "Here she comes,"
Bennie said softly. He waited until he had Croaker's gaze. "This
sucks, man, this bad feelin'. It's like poison, you know?"

"I'm sorry I
screwed up your evening, Bennie."

"Don't be dim."
Bennie waved his cigar in the air. "This here's bigger than an
evening with Maria." He blew out a cloud of aromatic smoke. "You
know what I thought about in that moment when the shark came up,
Lewis? It wasn't my whole life flashing like a line of tarot cards.
What I thought 'bout was my sister. Not my father, not my brothers.
Mi hermana."

Bennie turned to face
Croaker. "Rosa died five years ago. And what I was thinking was
this: my father, he always sort of dismissed her accomplishments,
even when she went to graduate school in Bogota, earned her master's
in economics and got a job at the World Bank. Not that he didn't love
her, not that he wasn't proud of her in his way. He just never showed
it."

Bennie's eyes were
clouded with memory and regret. "So in that moment I thought of
Rosa. I saw her being wounded by my father's indifference, by my
brothers' inattention, by my own benign neglect." He looked at
Croaker. "See, something's changed now. The fuckin' shark did
that to me, an' I'll never forget it. I miss her an' I'll never get a
chance to tell her that."

Then, he leaned over,
took Croaker's right hand, pointed to the tracery of blue veins along
the back of it. "What's this?" he hissed. "It's
fuckin' blood, Lewis." He nodded his head, as if he'd
just solved the riddle of the Sphinx. "Just remember, whatever
your sister is or isn't, whatever she's done, whatever hurt lies
between you, you two're joined. She's blood."

Matty had spotted
them and was walking over. She gave Bennie a hesitant look. Bennie
slid out of the car. He chivalrously left the door open for her, went
around to the driver's side, stood at Croaker's shoulder as Matty
came up to the T-bird. He gave her his best silken smile, then leaned
over, whispered in Croaker's ear: "God hear me, women can find
more ways to be cruel. But, you know what? Sometimes their brothers
can be worse."

Croaker watched him
saunter slowly back to the club entrance, smoking contentedly. What
an enigma Bennie Milagros was. Every time you thought you had a
handle on him, he showed you another facet of his personality. He was
mercurial, crass, muy simpatico, improbably spiritual—and
endlessly puzzling.

A moment later Matty
stood beside the T-bird, saying nothing. She'd darkened her curly,
wild hair to the color of toffee. It suited her coloring better than
when she'd had her hair dyed blonde. She was tall and willowy with
the long legs and curvy figure a man like Donald Duke would have
coveted—until someone taller and leggier came along.

About to say
something she started, as car doors slammed and an old Buick fired
up. Headlights swung across her face as the Buick rolled out of the
parking lot. Then she took a step toward him. Her tension was
palpable. "You know you have a habit of embarrassing the hell
out of me in public."

"Maybe now you
know a little of how Mama and I felt." Her expression was bleak,
her lips thinned by anxiety. "Christ, this isn't easy."

"Why should it
be? You sure as hell made it hard on us," She took a deep
breath, then compulsively opened her purse, slipped something out of
her wallet, passed it over to him.

It was a recent color
snapshot of Rachel. She had Matty's thick, curly hair and her intense
expression, but Donald's ice blue eyes and fair coloring. Whoever had
taken the photo had caught her in an unguarded moment of
concentration. She seemed as carefree as a person could get.

"She's
beautiful," he said with a painful pang. He'd just realized how
much he'd been cheated in the last fifteen years. He'd never had a
chance to watch her grow up.

"Thanks."
But she forgot to smile. She shook her head when he tried to hand
back the snapshot. "That's for you."

Croaker's gaze
lingered over it. "I can see both of you in her face."

"The thing is…"
She hesitated. "Donald had been gone for two years. Six months
ago he died. He was killed when his private jet got caught in a
thunderstorm and crashed into a mountainside outside San Francisco."

Croaker wanted to say
he was sorry, but the word stuck in his throat. Instead, he could not
help saying, "That must have made you rich."

"Not really."
She seemed resigned to his barbs. "A year ago, Donald remarried.
A young oil heiress from Texas with impeccable family credentials
which, I suppose, he'd longed for all the time. She gave birth to
their son a week before he died. Donald stipulated that the estate
will eventually go to him."

"Tough luck."
He held the photo up. "But you still have Rachel."

Matty's face seemed
abruptly pale. She looked like she was about to say something, then
at the last minute changed her mind. "Lew, I…" Her
gaze twisted away. "I have a confession to make. I know you
didn't say anything when I said you'd hadn't tried to contact us."

His jaw clenched
involuntarily.

"You see, I know
you tried to keep in touch with Rachel." She took a long,
shuddering breath. "I know because I made sure she didn't get
the letters."

"Sonuvabitch!"
His hands slammed the wheel, and she winced.

"It was terribly
wrong of me, I know." She shook her head. "But I thought I
was doing the right thing, shielding Rachie from someone I didn't
want her to see."

He looked at her and
said, "Why didn't you want her to see me?"

"Goddamnit."
Matty's eyes were wet and she tried to look everywhere but at his
face. "The truth is…" Her lip was trembling and she
licked a tear that had slid down her cheek. Her gaze finally found
his. "You see, she's so damn much like you."

Voices came, laughing
and high-spirited, as a group came out of the club. Another engine
started up and headlights lit the parking area for a moment before
swinging out onto the road.

"Well, hell,
what d'you know?" Croaker said in some wonderment. He looked at
the photo of Rachel again before sliding it away.

Matty settled herself
silently beside him. He smelled a waft of Giorgio perfume. They
lapsed into an uneasy silence. Old wounds, surfacing, were proving
difficult to deal with. Matty's anxiety had increased; he could feel
it like an itching in his bones. The salsa band had returned, its
rhythms insistent and alluring. He longed to be inside, dancing hip
to hip with Sonia. He wanted very much to apologize to her.

As if she could read
his mind, Matty said in her best brittle tone, "You look like
you can't spare much time. Go ahead, then. Your girlfriend's waiting
for you. But I must say I don't know why you waste your time."

"Oh, for
Christ's sake." He'd been expecting something like this.

"You can do so
much better than that."

"Like I could do
better than being a cop," he said.

"I always had
such high hopes for you."

"But they were
your hopes, Matty. Not mine." He turned to her. "Tell
me something. How come you never asked what it was I wanted out of
life? How come you assumed you knew."

She seemed on the
verge of tears. She was trembling slightly, and

Croaker had the
distinct impression she was keeping the tears back by sheer force of
will. "But I did know," she said in a small voice.
"We both wanted more for ourselves than Mama and Pop had. I know
that; we used to talk about it when we were young."

"Sure I wanted
better than what had been," he said. "But I didn't want to
turn my back on it. That's what you set out to do, Matty."

She squeezed her eyes
shut. Slowly, tears formed at the corners, welled, and dropped into
her lap. "I wish I could make you understand."

"Try."

She shook her head
from side to side. "That would mean…" Her eyes flew
open and she glared hotly at him for a moment. "All right."
But she couldn't sustain it, and she tilted her head back and stared
up into the clattering fronds of the coconut palms. "See, for
you it was different. You were a boy and the streets of Hell's
Kitchen were made for boys."

"That's no
reason—"

"Please be
still," she said. "It's hard enough…" Her eyes
squeezed shut again, and when she spoke her voice was as quiet as the
breeze drifting through the palms. "Just let me tell it, okay?"
She licked her lips as if they were dry, and he could see that she
was terribly frightened. Of a memory? "There was this boy.
Richie Paglia."

Croaker remembered
him: dark hair, hot eyes—a hunk. He'd gone out with Matty for a
while; then she dropped him cold and disappeared into the world
beyond Hell's Kitchen. She'd turned her back on her neighborhood and
her family. Not long after, she'd married Donald. It had pissed
Croaker off, the way she'd tossed aside a local kid who'd cared for
her, treating him like dirt. He had seen in that gesture an
intimation of a larger betrayal to come. All for Donald and his
glittering world. Croaker bit back an acid comment.

"Richie,"
Matty was saying. "He was so sweet on me." She put her
fingertips to her lips, as if she had to flog herself to continue.
"See, the thing of it was, Ritchie got me pregnant."

"What?"

Into the shinned
silence, she forced more words: "He offered to marry me but I
said no; I didn't love him and he didn't know what he wanted. There
wasn't anything between us but sex. We'd had fun, that's all. It
happens, Lew."

"Not to my
sister."

"I knew you'd
say that." She sighed. "But it did happen."
Her voice trailed away. She put a hand up, pressed it against her
forehead for a moment. "I couldn't go to you. I was, what,
nineteen?

I'd finished college
in three years, made dean's list. I wanted a career, but what did any
of that matter to you? I knew you'd make us get married and we'd be
miserable. Either that, or you'd beat the crap out of Richie, which
he didn't deserve. Besides, Catholic that I am, I was ashamed. You
remember how strict Mama was about religion."

She stared down at
her hands. "I was in a panic. I felt I was inside a box that was
closing in on me. Richie and I decided the best thing was for him to
disappear from the neighborhood. That was the easy part. He'd gotten
a job across the river in Hoboken and he said he'd move there. As for
me…" Her restless gaze roved the treetops. "As for
me, I had to find a place outside of Hell's Kitchen. A clinic, a
doctor."

Croaker could
scarcely catch his breath. How could his reading of their shared past
have been so flawed? The truth had a cruel habit of surprising just
about everyone, "So you had the abortion."

Matty nodded. "It
was a decision that almost tore my heart out. For a long time I felt
unclean, wrapped in a sinner's ashes. I couldn't bring myself to set
foot in church. I felt I had turned my face away from God. But I had
no other choice."

She buried her head
in her hands, and he waited, his heart beating very fast.

"Afterward, I
found that I couldn't go home. I couldn't face the inevitable
interrogation you'd put me through. I knew you, Lew. You'd take one
look at my face and know something was wrong."

"I tried to look
for you."

She nodded. "But
you couldn't find me. I had just enough graduation money to stay in a
hotel for a couple of weeks. When the money ran out I got a job as a
copywriter at an ad agency. And for the first time I was happy. I
felt free."

"Free of us,"
Croaker said. "Your family."

Matty shook her head.
"Free of that apartment. It was so dark and depressing. My God,
Lew, how could you stand living there for so long?"

"Mom and Pop
were there," he said. "It was home."

Matty turned her head
away. "The agency is where I met Donald." Her tone turned
wistful. "I worked long hours and didn't mind. I was trying to
stare down my conscience in the mirror, but after a while I found I
was so happy I was no longer racked by guilt." She ran her hand
along the T-bird's chrome work. "Six months after I started work
Donald bought the agency. I'd moved up by then. I had a group of
midlevel accounts I was handling. Anyway, the day the papers were
signed Donald fired all the high- priced executives, along with their
triple-martini lunches, then put together a transition team from
those remaining to evaluate the company and the staff for him. I was
part of the team. I worked alongside him for three months. Every day.
I never thought he noticed, but I was wrong. He told me later he'd
been watching me from day one."

She turned to him,
her face full of tears. "Without even knowing it, I'd slipped
into a whole new life. So you see, after everything that had
happened, everything I wanted to forget, I couldn't face the
family—especially you, Lew. Mr. Detective, Even after months
and months had gone by I was terrified you'd see the truth in my eyes
every time I tried to lie."

Croaker, stunned and
ashamed, heard Bennie's words coming back to haunt him: God hears
me, women can find more ways to be cruel. But, you know what?
Sometimes their brothers can be worse. Something hard and ugly
broke apart inside him. "Matty—" Just the soft,
conciliatory tone of his voice caused her to break down. She was
sobbing as he reached for her, her shoulders shaking, her head
pressed against the crook of his shoulder. He held her close to him,
and wonder of wonders, his eyes were wet, as well. Bennie was right.
No matter who she was, no matter what had gone on between them, they
were blood. It was odd to realize that what he had mistaken for anger
was simply mischance and misunderstanding.

"I couldn't face
you," she whispered. "I couldn't bear the recriminations,
the look on your face when you found out, your contempt for me for
being so stupid, for doing all the wrong things. So I took the
coward's way out; after I'd married Donald it was easier to cut the
family out. But I swear it was your unwavering sense of morality that
stared at me in the mirror every morning."

He held her closer,
said, "What's done is done, Matty. It's all in the past. We can
start over again."

"Really? Oh, my
God, Lew, that would be so wonderful, a dream come true, but—"

She was rigid with
tension, and he drew her gently away from him so he could see her
face. "But what?"

Her eyes were wide
and staring in mortal fear, and instinctively he knew that the stark
terror he saw in her eyes was what had driven her to seek him out
after all this time. "Matty, what is it?"

"Oh, dear God,"
she whispered through her sobs, "Rachel's dying. Lew, my little
girl is slipping away and I don't know what to do."

DAY
TWO

1

Royal Poinciana
Hospital was a twelve-story pale gold brick edifice that rose at the
east end of Eucalyptus Street. Though it was a stone's throw from the
Flagler Memorial Bridge and within walking distance of Royal
Poinciana Way and the Breakers Hotel on Palm Beach, its immediate
surroundings were dark, bleak, and not a little dangerous.

Across the moat of
the Intracoastal, women with big hair emerged from gleaming
Rolls-Royces without a care in the world. Here, you were obliged to
lock your car doors the moment you slid behind the wheel. It was more
than symbolic that the hospital, facing the light-spangled
Intracoastal, had turned its back on North Dixie Highway and, beyond,
Broadway. That area, filled with broken-down cement-block houses and
floodlit fifty-cent coin laundries, was the mean province of the
black community that lapped precipitously at Palm Beach's outer edge.
It was no wonder that the Palm Beach concierges urged their charges
to avoid the immediate northwest territory.

Be that as it may,
Matty seemed entirely unperturbed as she got out of her black Lexus.
They hurried across the blacktop parking lot and up the stairs into
the hospital. A faint smell of bandages and antiseptic floated in the
close-to-freezing air. A security guard showed them where to check in
and pick up day tags-Matty turned back to Croaker. This morning she
looked exhausted, as if she had paced the floor all night, waiting
for dawn to arrive. She'd tried to do something with the dark circles
under her eyes, but when she took off her Donna Karan sunglasses
Croaker could see she'd failed.

At the end of the
hall on the sixth floor they went through the double doors marked
dialysis unit. They entered an area that looked for all the world
like the waiting room of hell. Old people, bent and haggard as last
year's saw grass, were lined up in the hallway. They were supported
by walkers, wheelchairs, and crutches. The occasional nurse marched
down the line inspecting them like the guard outside a disco who
decides which people will be allowed to enter. The place reeked of
medication and resignation. As Croaker passed this rank of the
infirm, he could hear thick and ragged breathing, tiny moans and
disturbed grunts, as if he had come upon a watering hole in the
African veld.

"Diabetics
waiting for their dialysis," Matty murmured.

Beyond another set of
doors was CCD, the Critical Care Dialysis. It was a warren of
claustrophobic cubicles built around a central nurses' station.
Surrounding patients in beds were crash carts, IV stands, monitors,
arcane medical paraphernalia, and, in some cases, dialysis machines.

Of the eight people
in the unit only Rachel was young. The rest seemed to have been
plucked from those unfortunates who had been on the dialysis line too
long.

Croaker approached
Rachel tentatively, as though he might wake her with an incautious
step. But she was beyond such concerns. According to what Matty had
told him Rachel's condition was critical. She had been in a coma at
the time she had been admitted to the hospital and had not come out
of it. She was so pale it looked as if every drop of blood had been
drained from her. Blue veins throbbed beneath the thin skin of her
temples- A tangled mass of hair spread lankly on the pillowcase. A
gold nose ring had been pushed aside by a plastic tube. Croaker tried
to imagine her as the child she had been at her christening, when
he'd held her in his arms, but the memory eluded him. All he saw was
the fifteen-year-old who lay before him. His heart was caught in a
viselike grip. He was struck all over again by how beautiful she was,
but her face looked like a death mask.

She was catheterized
and tubed, hooked up to monitors that showed her pulse, heart rate,
and blood pressure. IV drips punctured her veins. A computerized
dialysis machine, perhaps four-and-a-half feet high, clad in beige
plastic, pumped dutifully at her side, cleansing her blood, doing the
work her damaged kidneys apparently could not.

At last, his heart
broke and he turned back to Matty. "What's going on? What the
hell happened to her?" There was more than a little anger inside
him.

Matty stood mutely,
staring dully at the dialysis machine, which had taken on an odd and
vaguely unsettling presence, as if it were a large and loyal dog that
would not leave its master's side.

"Simply put,
she's suffering from nephro-toxic poisoning brought on by an overdose
of cocaine and amphetamines."

Croaker turned to see
a female doctor in her midthirties, fit as an amateur athlete, pretty
in a tough, no-nonsense way. Her reddish hair was pulled back from
her catlike face.

She stuck out her
hand and Croaker took it. "I'm Dr. Marsh. Jenny Marsh." She
cocked an eyebrow. "And you are?"

"Lew Croaker.
I'm Matty's—

"Ah, the
prodigal brother returneth." Dr. Marsh smiled. "From all
Mrs. Duke has told me, I'm glad she was able to locate you. Excuse me
a moment." She turned to Matty. "We'd like to take some
more blood and urine, Mrs. Duke, if that's all right."

Matty nodded mutely
and Dr. Marsh signed for a lab tech to come in.

"Doctor, I'd
appreciate some details on my niece's condition," Croaker said
as the tech began to draw blood from Rachel's arm.

The cubicle had
gotten uncomfortably cramped, and Dr. Marsh said, "Why don't we
continue this conversation outside." She and Croaker stepped out
into the center area, but Matty stayed behind.

"My sister—"

"Personally I'm
relieved you're here," Dr. Marsh said. "Mrs. Duke is having
difficulty assimilating everything that's happened to Rachel. That's
perfectly understandable, given the nature of the situation. However,
she tells me you're an ex-cop, is that right?"

Croaker nodded.

"Then I assume
you've had experience with teenagers on drugs."

"Too much."

Jenny Marsh nodded as
she led him out of the Dialysis Unit and through a frosted glass door
with a cardboard sign taped onto it that read: palm beach county drug
abuse research study—grant AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

Croaker found himself
in one of two windowless rooms, crammed with zinc-topped lab tables
covered with Bunsen burners, banks of autoclaves and centrifuges, and
microscopes. Behind these were neat rows of test tubes, retorts,
pipettes, glass slides, eyedrop-pers, and precisely tagged glass
bottles of chemical reagents. A single electron microscope hulked in
one corner. This paraphernalia made him vaguely uneasy. It could not
help but remind him of morgues he had been in, escorting relatives or
close friends of murder victims making painful and traumatic
identification while he stood by stoic and, for the moment, helpless.

Against one wall was
a row of stainless-steel cabinets, along with an outmoded
refrigerator and a small table laden with a hot plate, coffeemaker,
paper cups, jars of Cremora, and the like.

"There's a drug
abuse research study going on," Jenny Marsh said. "It's
county funded, but because the hospital's involved, I volunteered to
oversee it."

"Don't you
already have enough on your plate, Doctor?"

Jenny Marsh smiled.
It was a nice smile that caused her physician's cool mask to slip
just a fraction. "Yes, I do. But this study's important.
Frankly, I'd rather be a part of it than sleep."

Croaker watched the
lab assistant he'd seen in Rachel's cubicle come in, presumably with
her blood, and go into the other room. While there was activity here,
it was far calmer than in the CCD.

"As soon as
Rachel was diagnosed as a drug O.D. blood and urine samples were
taken for the study," Dr. Marsh said. "It's being done
twice a day. Her contribution to the study is very helpful, and I
promise you the amounts of blood withdrawn will not affect her in any
way."

"Matty said
okay?"

"Once the value
of the program was explained to her," Dr. Marsh said.

Croaker nodded. "It's
fine by me then."

"Okay, first
things first." Jenny Marsh went to the table with the coffeepot.
"Rachel was brought in through Emergency. She was exhibiting all
the classic signs of drug overdose."

Dr. Marsh nodded as
she poured coffee for them both. "All of the above. Plus, she
was having seizures with severe vomiting in between. In the attending
physician's opinion she was clearly in shock." She looked at
him. "Black? Cream?"

"Black's fine,"
he said.

She methodically put
four packs of sugar into the dark and unreadable waters of her
coffee. Then she handed him a paper cup. "Dr. Niguel, the
attending, tried to revive Rachel without success. At this point, he
dispatched one of the nurses to talk to your sister—who had
brought Rachel in—to see if she could tell him what sort of
drugs Rachel was into." Dr. Marsh's gaze turned sympathetic.
"I'm afraid that's when Mrs. Duke freaked out."

Croaker put his cup
down. "What do you mean, she freaked out?"

Dr. Marsh perched on
the edge of a backless lab stool. "She went into hysterics, said
she wanted her daughter back, that she'd sue us up and down for
malpractice, that her daughter had never taken drugs in her life, and
we were a bunch of incompetents to insinuate otherwise."

"But she was
wrong."

"She was wrong."
Dr. Marsh crossed her arms over her breasts. "At the tender age
of fifteen your niece is a habitual drug user."

"How bad? Was
she shooting?"

"That's the good
news. The only good news, I'm afraid." Dr. Marsh sipped
her coffee. "We found no evidence of needle tracks. Coke,
uppers, pot were her thing. Blood work confirmed this." She
sighed. "Then, according to Dr. Niguel, her kidneys started to
shut down. In Emergency they were looking for signs of bacterial
endocarditis, which is an infection you find in needle drug users."

"Right.
Infection of the heart valves. Causes blood clots that can break off
and go to the brain—or the kidneys." He put aside the
coffee. The acid was doing unpleasant things to the lining of his
stomach. Or maybe it was the subject of their conversation. This was
his niece they were talking about, not someone off the inner city
streets. "But Rachel didn't have bacterial endocarditis."

"No." Dr.
Marsh got up, rummaged through the old refrigerator. She sniffed at
an open container of yogurt, then used a forefinger to taste it. "You
want anything?"

"A million
dollars, the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound."
When she gave him a wry look, he said, "But nothing from in
there."

"Smart man. You
have to be a doctor who hasn't eaten in thirty-odd hours to be
desperate enough to ingest this stuff." Jenny Marsh closed the
refrigerator door. "A renal ultrasound revealed no trace of
polycystic kidneys, the most typical problem for young people. It's
hereditary."

She took some more
yogurt with a plastic spoon. "But the ultrasound did reveal
something interesting. At this time Dr. Niguel called me in. I
determined her blood pressure was dangerously low and there was a
serious lack of oxygen in her kidney."

"Nephro-toxic
poisoning."

"Bingo."

"But you said
kidney, as in singular."

Dr. Marsh ate her
yogurt slowly and methodically, savoring it as if it were manna from
heaven. "That's the anomaly the renal ultrasound showed us. Your
niece was born with only one functioning kidney. The other is
shriveled, nonfunctional."

"Did you get her
medical history?"

Dr. Marsh nodded.
"After I got her started on dialysis I asked

Mrs. Duke for
Rachel's family doctor. His name's Ronald Stansky—he's in West
Palm. While you're here you'll surely run into him. He seems
genuinely concerned." She swiped her fingers around the inside
of the container, gathering the last of the yogurt. "Anyway, Dr.
Stansky knew nothing about the one kidney. But that's hardly
surprising. Unless Rachel had had renal trouble in the past, there's
no way he would have known or had cause to check."

"And she
hadn't."

"No."

Croaker thought this
sequence of events over in his mind until he could picture everything
that had happened, step by step. The process served to settle him
down. His emotions were so roiled they threatened to impair his
reasoning. That wouldn't do anyone any good, especially Rachel.

In the other room, a
phone began to ring. "I want to know what I can do," he
said. "You've made it clear her condition's very bad and I…"
He paused to take a breath as a painful image of Rachel lying
unconscious and helpless not twenty yards away blazed in his mind.
"Jesus, I just found her again and…"

"Take your
time," Dr. Marsh said softly. For the first time, he noticed her
eyes seemed to change color with the light, from green to hazel.
"This is a large dose of emotion to deal with at once, I know."
A lab tech stuck her head in, told her there was a phone call, and
Dr. Marsh mouthed, "Not now." To Croaker, she said, "I
want to be sure you're with me completely for this."

Croaker nodded. "I'm
okay. It's just that her life's just beginning. The thought of her
spending the rest of it on dialysis—well, it's going to take
some getting used to."

"If only it were
that simple."

Croaker felt as if he
were in free fall. "What do you mean?"

Jenny Marsh leaned
forward. "The kidney needs to be replaced pronto."

A cold pool was
forming in the pit of Croaker's stomach. "Why?"

"Normally,
dialysis would work. But, in Rachel's case, there are complications."

Her face grew grim
and determined and Croaker had the terrible suspicion that they'd
entered the final phase of this nightmarish conversation. "Like
what?"

"She's developed
sepsis. An infection."

"From the
catheter?"

"Not in this
hospital and definitely not in my section," she said. "When
she passed out she fell. I suspect the sepsis developed from the
wound. The attending in Emergency was quite rightly concentrating on
the renal failure. The wound was treated later."

She put the empty
yogurt container aside. "This is why I wanted to get you away
from your niece and your sister. Mrs. Duke is going to need your cool
head in the days and weeks to come. You see, I've tried several times
to fully explain Rachel's situation to her, but she just won't
listen."

"Tell me, then,"
Croaker said with a certain sense of dread.

She took a quick
breath. "The dialysis machine is washing her blood, doing the
work of her kidney, that's true enough. If we can stabilize
her. But the hard truth is she's far from stabilized now. In the
meantime, we're having difficulty controlling the sepsis. It's
sapping her last reserves of strength."

Croaker stared at
her. "Bottom line."

Jenny Marsh was not
one to flinch from hard truths. "Without an immediate kidney
transplant, she'll die."

"Immediate."
The cold pool spread up into his abdomen and chest. "How long?"

Dr. Marsh shrugged.
"Now that becomes a matter of medical interpretation. This
medical professional says two weeks, maybe three, no more." She
said this in a clear, steady voice while looking him straight in the
eye. He appreciated that.

"Doctor, tell me
something. How good are you?"

"I'm the best."
She said it flatly, as a statement of fact. There seemed no ego
involved at all. "My advice to your sister was to get a
second—even a third opinion—if she desired. She did and
both doctors concurred with my prognosis. You can speak to them if
you wish, but the bottom line is Rachel has got to have a new
kidney."

"Would you be
the one to put it in her?"

Dr. Marsh nodded.
"Most assuredly."

"Okay. Then we
get her one."

Jenny Marsh sighed
ruefully. "Yes, the ideal scenario is for a sister—preferably
a twin—to donate his or her kidney. There are no other siblings
in this family. I've tested Mrs. Duke. She isn't compatible."

"You'll test me,
of course."

Jenny Marsh nodded.
"ASAP. But I have to be honest, the chances of a match aren't
good. Your sister's already been screened and rejected."

"Okay. Say she
can't use one of mine. Give me another alternative."

"Every kidney
that becomes available for transplant in this coun- try is typed. The
report is then put on-line at the National Computer Center of UNOS in
Richmond, Virginia. The United Network of Organ Sharing registers
each and every organ. There are no exceptions. Organs are harvested,
but there are never enough for the growing list of recipients. If
anyone's to blame it's our fellow man. People just don't want to
donate. It's tragic. I'll give you one example close to home. Last
year we had thirty-five thousand deaths in Palm Beach county alone.
If all those people had been organ donors, Rachel and others in dire
need like her all across the country wouldn't have a problem."

"But we do have
a problem," Croaker said.

"Yes." Dr.
Marsh nodded. "And it's an insoluble one, I'm afraid. There's a
waiting list for a kidney of about thirty-six thousand people
nationally. Also, there's a case for need. Rachel's young, which is
in her favor, but she's a drug user, which is definitely not. In
terms of time, we're looking at between sixteen and twenty-four
months at the earliest."

Croaker rocked
backward, as if he had been slapped across the face. "Christ,
this can't be happening. It isn't possible."

"I'm afraid it
is," Dr. Marsh said. "In one way, we've become lucky with
kidneys. They're the only major organ we are able to keep alive
outside the host body. With a perfusion machine you chill it to
thirty-two degrees centigrade and pump Belzer solution through it.
Believe it or not, it's a potato starch compound. It's a real medical
breakthrough. You can even do it on a brain-dead body. Just pump the
chilled solution into the abdominal cavity. That way, you've got
seventy-two hours before the kidney becomes compromised."

"But in Rachel's
case this breakthrough does us no good at all." Croaker tried
not to sound bitter.

"Unless you can
pull strings I don't know about and get her a kidney."

He leaned forward.
"Doc, can't you, you know, pull strings?"

She looked at him for
a minute, and he thought he saw a flicker of pity in her eyes. "This
isn't city hall. You don't pull strings to get a new kidney; not
unless you have a hundred million dollars to donate to renal
research, and even then it's more a matter of luck than anything
else. As I told you, each kidney is registered. If I—or any
other doctor in this country—is caught putting an unregistered
organ into a patient it's not only our license that's forfeit, it's
our freedom. The act's illegal."

Croaker's
biomechanical hand curled into a powerful fist. "But there's got
to be a way," he said.

Jenny Marsh silently
regarded that curious and singular weapon with the respect it
merited. "Unless you can come up with a donor who's willing and
whose blood type and HLA—human lymphocitic antigens—are
compatible with Rachel's, I'm afraid there isn't."

"Did Matty tell
you I was a detective in the NYPD?" Croaker said.

"Yes, she did."

"I'll find
Rachie a donor." Then the look on her face registered. "What're
my odds?"

"I can tell you
from experience there aren't many people around willing to give up a
kidney. At least, a kidney in decent shape. But even if you did find
someone, their blood type and three of six of their HLAs would have
to match Rachel's body chemistry."

Croaker was shaken
all over again. "Christ, I'd have as much chance of winning the
Florida lottery."

She shook her head
sorrowfully. "Mr. Croaker, if it weren't for bad odds, you'd
have no odds at all."

Speaking of which,
Sonia .Villa-Lobos was having a very bad day indeed. When she got up
that morning, she discovered that the power was off. It flickered on
just long enough for her to take a shower before it died again. In
the morning's light, she carefully made the bed, smoothing down
corners and edges that were ruffled. She was forced to break out her
emergency equipment: a battery-powered hair drier. She did her makeup
sitting in her car with the door open. The sun streaming through the
tinted windows would have otherwise destroyed her color sense.

Mrs. Leyes emerged
from the house next door, and Sonia leaned out the car door to
complain about the power outage. Estrella Leyes, a Paraguayan from
the hill country, stopped to hand over a casserole covered with
aluminum foil.

"For Nestor."
She kissed Sonia warmly on both cheeks. With her only daughter long
moved away she had come to look on Sonia as a surrogate. "He's
better?" she asked hopefully,

"Unfortunately
he's not." Sonia put away her hair drier.

"You should have
him come see me," Mrs. Leyes said.

Sonia smiled and
patted the older woman's arm. "I would, but he's gotten to the
point where he can't get out of the house."

"¡Ay,
pobre! Then I should come see him."

"That would be
nice," Sonia said. "But I don't know what good it would do.
Nestor's dying."

From where Sonia
lived in El Portal it was not more than twelve minutes due south to
work. However, three days a week she made a detour off NE Second
Avenue to look in on her friend. Nestor had been a professional
dancer, a young man with a beautiful, sinuous body. His work had been
ethereal, so it was doubly a crime that he was dying of AIDS. She
often brought him food she made or, when too busy, that she bought at
the Thai restaurant down the road. Nestor loved Thai food. He didn't
care much for Estrella's goat casseroles, but Sonia had the good
sense never to tell the older woman that.

Today, she discovered
Nestor lying in bed, facing the wall. The sheets were an unholy mess,
and she spent forty minutes cleaning him up. He was in one of his
unresponsive moods, so while she worked she recited poems by Rudyard
Kipling. She'd read them to him so many times they were committed to
memory. He loved the precise cadences of Kipling's nineteenth-century
mind, and he responded to the profound sense of mystery Kipling must
surely have felt for the exotic places to which he traveled.

Her heart broke to
leave Nestor alone, but in truth there was nothing more she could do
for him and she was already late for work.

Lord Constantine Fine
Imports on NE Fortieth Street in the Design District of Miami was a
two-story persimmon-colored building with a gated courtyard filled
with palms and hibiscus trees.

She got into the
office and hit her desk running. As one of three partners, she was in
charge of buying from the South American and Mexican export
companies, which accounted for three-quarters of Lord Constantine's
high-end furniture and accessories business. Consequently, there were
an alarming number of urgent calls she had to make. She was so busy
she didn't have time to brief her assistant on the afternoon's
appointments. Sonia liked to have just the right furnishings
displayed for her best decorator clients.

At twelve-thirty,
just as her stomach was starting to growl like a lion at feeding
time, Carol, her assistant, stuck her head in the door.

"Sorry,"
she said, "but I just got a call from Florida Power and Light.
You were having power outages?"

Sonia nodded. She was
still wondering whether to show Ellen Wright, her first appointment,
the pre-Columbian head that had just arrived. "This morning."

"Well, they've
got to get into your place."

"Okay, make an
appointment for—"

"They say now."
Her assistant's freckled face held an expression of regret. "There
seems to be some kind of royal screwup that has to do with the gas
lines and they say it can't wait."

Sonia cursed under
her breath. There went her afternoon. "Okay.

Tell them I'll be
right there. Oh, and Carol, please cancel Mrs. Wright, then take a
look at my calendar. I'll phone you with an update as soon as I get a
handle on how long I'm going to be. Hopefully you won't have to
cancel anyone else."

It had begun to rain
as Sonia drove home. Not just rain, but a South Florida torrent
dropping out of a roiling charcoal sky. The rank smell of tropical
vegetation turned the air to soup. Thunder boomed and rolled and the
lines of cars on the road threw off thick sprays of water.

Instead of work she
found herself thinking about Lew Croaker. She longed to call him,
promised herself she would as soon as she had a spare moment. She
liked him a lot, which surprised her. First of all, she hardly knew
him; wary at heart, it usually took her a while to warm up to a man.
Second of all, he was Anglo. Oh, but not just any Anglo, she reminded
herself. He knew Latinos, appreciated their culture. Plus, he wasn't
a muy macho pig, like so many men she'd met.

She was surprised
that even though the power was still out in her house, she heard the
TV from Estrella's next door. Mr. Leyes had been a lineman for Bell
South, He'd been paralyzed falling off a pole, and now he stayed home
all day and watched ESPN.

She'd forgotten to
return the umbrella to the car where she usually kept it, so she got
soaked running from the side carport to her front door. Her house was
neat and freshly painted, a white one-story with tile roof and stucco
facade dating back to the 1950s. Its trim was a shade of very pale
blue that seemed indigenous to El Portal. She ran past the cement
seahorses holding up a cracked fountain that no longer worked, past a
dripping lemon tree and thick night-blooming jasmine, now whipped by
the wind and bent by the rain. She went up the steps to the covered
porch, then took a look around. Where the hell was FPL? Just like the
utilities to cry emergency then be late showing up. She decided to
wait for them inside.

The warm, vivid,
tropical colors with which she'd decorated were muted in the gloom.
Rain pelted the windowpanes, sheeting down the glass. Another roll of
thunder boomed and echoed outside.

She went through the
living room and into the small kitchen. Out of habit, she opened the
refrigerator, but she saw nothing appealing inside.

She went into her
bedroom and turned on the battery-powered bedside radio. Gloria
Estefan crooned in Spanish, which was followed by a very sexy
Afro-Cuban number by Machito. The Cu-bop was in two-four time, and
she merengued into the bathroom. A

plastic bubble
skylight lent what little illumination there was, and she leaned over
the sink, peering at herself in the mirror.

She started. What was
that? Her gaze flicked to a corner of the mirror. What had she seen
there? A shadow moving? Must have been a car passing outside, she
thought, her gaze returning to her own reflection.

In the bedroom the
music had stopped. An announcer was reading an ad for a Latin party
jam in South Beach this Saturday. It sounded cool. She wondered
whether Croaker would go with her if she asked him. She hoped he
would. Getting hot and sweaty with him would be a treat. The more she
thought about him the more she wanted to see him. He was awfully
sexy. Her thoughts drifted to them dancing the merengue at the Shark
Bar before his poor sister had popped up out of nowhere. Sonia
remembered how he held her, how he moved with her, and her breath
grew hot in her throat.

She started; she saw
it again. Now she was sure. There was movement behind her—either
in the bedroom, or beyond, in the living room.

For a long time, she
did not move. Her gaze flicked from one side of the mirror to the
other, scrutinizing the wedge of the interior she could see in
reflection. She did not want to turn around yet, did not want to give
any overt sign that she had seen something amiss. She was not
frightened, but she was wary. She'd had a gym-freak boyfriend about a
year ago who was paranoid about urban violence. He'd shown her a
trick or two about self-defense, and after that she hadn't been
afraid of getting into her car at night or even driving to the nearby
7-Eleven at three in the morning for milk or sugar. The night
crawlers who hung out there didn't bother her.

But this was her
home.

Was someone in the
living room?

She turned and, as
calmly as she was able, went back into the bedroom. She stood there
for a long, breathless moment, scanning the gloom. Hello,
she thought. Anybody there? She felt herself give a little
shiver. A male voice was spewing out the news in rapid-fire Spanish.
None of it was good.

She stared at the
telephone, which was on a nightstand on the far side of the bed. Her
knees felt suddenly weak, and she sank to the bed. As she did so, she
glanced into the living room. At this new angle, she saw something
that made her heart leap into her throat. There was a darkly
glistening puddle on the wood floor of the dining alcove. Rainwater.
But she hadn't been near the dining alcove. From this position a wall
protruded out, blocking off most of that small space. Someone could
be standing there, waiting.

Could it be one of
the electrical linemen? But then why didn't he say something?

There was more
urgency inside her now, and she sprawled across the bed, reaching for
the phone. The bitter taste of fear was in her mouth and now her only
thought was to call 911. She felt the shock wave of air coming her
way even as she lifted the receiver. Darkness, like a great shadow,
bloomed on her right side, and the bed rocked as someone hit her full
force.

She screamed as she
went flying. The receiver bounced on the bed, spun away from her as
she hit the floor on her back. A weight like a six-hundred-pound
gorilla pressed painfully onto her breasts and rib cage, immobilizing
her. At the same time, something soft and perfumed and very familiar
enveloped her face. It pushed down, making breathing difficult, then
impossible. It was her pillow. Someone was trying to smother her.

She opened her mouth
to scream but cotton-covered down filled it. Her jaws were thrust
wide open by the terrible pressure and she began to choke. Something
dark and primitive went off in her brain like a Roman candle and she
began to thrash wildly with arms and legs. It was too little too
late.

Breath caught in her
throat and she began to gag. But she did not give up. Her clawed
hands raked and scraped flesh until a powerful grip pinioned her
wrists against the floor.

She heard a voice
hiss: "Cuidado! Be careful! You know this! She must not
be damaged in any way!"

It was a Spanish
dialect that seemed awfully familiar to her. Where had she heard it
before? Then she had it: Bennie's grandfather, that strange and
sometimes frightening man, had used it on occasion. It was curious
the minutia the mind could latch onto at such moments. She recalled
Bennie's grandfather—a tall, stoop-shouldered man with craggy
brows and a thick pure white mustache—with a preternatural
clarity. Smoking one of his aromatic hand-rolled cigars, he seemed to
hover in the air. He was whispering to her in his dialect, and she
knew he was trying to tell her something vital. She cried out in her
desperation to hear him, but she could not.

Life was escaping her
with each beat of her heart. She tried to take a ragged breath
through the wadding that filled her mouth, but to no avail. Her lungs
were on fire and when she gagged again, acidic vomit filled her
throat and she spiraled downward.

Bennie's grandfather
had disappeared. On the Shark Bar's dance floor, she merengued with
Lew Croaker. The sensual beat throbbed through her, insinuating
itself into her very bones. She looked into his eyes and melted. She
was weeping for joy. I want you, she said in her mind as she
died.

2

By late afternoon
Croaker felt drained. He'd given blood to Dr. Marsh for HLA typing,
he'd interviewed Dr. Niguel, to see if he had any further insight
into Rachel's condition when she was admitted to Emergency, and he'd
spent more time with Matty and Rachel.

At last, he took a
breather outside in the hospital's parking lot and used his cell
phone to call his charter office at the marina. He had them cancel
his appointments for the next several weeks. Between the money he had
been paid by the Feds for his work after he'd left the NYPD and the
successful investments he'd made over the years, he didn't need the
income from the fishing charter in order to live. He did it because
it gave him pleasure.

He'd just hung up
when the cell phone chirped.

"Hello?"

Silence. No, not
quite. He could hear a quick catch of breath.

"Lew?"

"Yes."

"This is Maria."

Maria. It took him a
moment to orient himself. Bennie's Maria.

"Hola,
Maria. Como estàs?"

"Do you know
where Sonia lives?"

"El Portal. Yes,
she told me."

"We need you
here."

We? "Maria,
what's the matter?" His throat seemed to fill up with alarm.
"What's happened?"

Croaker heard a
muffled sound. She was sobbing. "Maria, are you in El Portal?
Are you at Sonia's?" He realized he was shouting.

"Please."
It was a kind of moan. "Now."

Croaker was already
running toward his T-bird.

Croaker made the
ninety-minute trip from Palm Beach to the upper reaches of Miami in
sixty-five minutes. He was lucky, in that what obviously had been a
torrential downpour here had petered out to a fine drizzle.

He whipped down I-95
at such speed that he missed the Ninety-fifth Street exit. Cursing
under his breath, he got off at Seventy-ninth Street, went east to NE
Second Avenue and turned left through the northern end of Little
Haiti. Just past Jacky Jackson's Relax Barber Shop he crossed over
the Little River Canal into the peaceful, pretty enclave of El
Portal. By that time the rain had stopped altogether and sparks of
bright late afternoon sunlight were piercing swiftly scudding clouds.
He drove down streets lined with small, neat one-family houses of
stucco or brick face over cement block, painted the soothing tones of
the Caribbean. Banyans vied with citrus trees for curbside space, and
here and there, vivid sprays of bougainvillea and tree hibiscus
seemed newly scrubbed in dazzling sunlight.

Bennie's black Humvee
was easy to spot, and Croaker pulled in beside it. For almost anyone
else outside Hollywood the Hummer would have been a kind of absurd
overkill. Not for Bennie. The U.S. Army vehicle was armor plated with
bullet-proof glass and special door locks that could not be jimmied.
In his line of work it was something of a necessity.

When Croaker got out
of his T-bird, he saw someone sitting in the Hummer's front
passenger's seat. The windows were rolled down and he walked over.
Maria was sitting stiff-backed in the seat. She must have heard the
scrape of his shoe soles against the cement of the sidewalk because
her head jerked around. Her eyes were wide and staring.

Croaker stopped
beside the open window. "Maria. I'm here."

For an eerie instant,
she did not move or even blink. "I called Bennie. He's here,
too." She spoke as if she were oblivious to the fact that she
was sitting in his vehicle.

He put his hands on
the window frame. "Maria. Digame. What's happened? Is
Sonia all right?"

She gave no reply.

"Lewis."

At the sound of
Bennie's voice, Croaker looked up. He saw Bennie coming around the
side of a white house with pale blue trim. He recognized it from
Sonia's description: it was her house. Bennie slapped his palms
together, getting rid of dirt and leaf debris. In a pale linen suit,
he looked overdressed for rooting around on the ground. There was a
peculiar look on his face as he came up to where Croaker stood.
Somehow that look sent a chill down Croaker's spine.

"Listen to me,"
Bennie said quietly. "Turn around and get out of here. She
shouldn't have called you."

"This is
bullshit, Bennie. What's going on?"

"Go home,"
Bennie said. "I don't want you involved."

"I'm already
involved," Croaker said. "You saw to that yourself when you
introduced me to Sonia. Pearl in the oyster, remember?"

"Yo
recuerdo, Lewis," Bennie's gaze searched his face.

"Digame.
What's this all about?"

"Nothing good."
Bennie gestured and they moved away from Maria and the Humvee. "At
approximately three this afternoon Maria gets a call from Sonia's
assistant at Lord Constantine Fine Imports. This woman is kinda, you
know, freaked. Someone from FPL calls the office saying they need
access to Sonia's house and she leaves the office just past
twelve-thirty. By, like, three she's missed an appointment, hasn't
phoned in as promised. The assistant tries numerous times to call
here but can't get through."

Bennie's gaze flicked
past Croaker to check on Maria, sitting still as a statue in the
Hummer. He looked back to Croaker. "That's when she calls FPL.
Get this. They have no record of a problem, calling the office, or
dispatching a crew. That's when the assistant phones Maria."

With a sinking
feeling in his stomach, Croaker said, "You check the power?"

Bennie nodded. "I
just came from there." He jerked his head. "Someone cut the
lines into the house. One clip; very clean. Professional job."

"You see
anything else? Footprints, any other kinds of impressions? The ground
looks kind of marshy from the downpour."

Bennie looked at him
for a moment, then went loping back to the Hummer. He checked on
Maria while he rummaged under the driver's seat. In a moment, he was
back with a roll of black tape.

They took a quick
reconnoiter around the house. Croaker could see no sign of
footprints, but at one point he got down on one knee to show Bennie
what appeared to be a run of parallel lines bruising the wet and
glistening grass.

"These mean
anything to you?"

Bennie shook his
head.

They came upon the
cut line. "I don't feature sticking my head into a dark oven
without knowing whose hand is on the pilot light," Croaker said.
Using the polycarbonate part of his biomechanical hand to ground the
live ends, he spliced the line with electrician's tape.

When he rose, he took
a deep breath. "I think we'd better try to get inside. Front
door?"

"It's locked,
but that's no problem." Bennie dangled a set of keys on a chain
from one finger. "Maria brought the spare set Sonia gave her."

Bennie's eyes were
dark and very sad. "Lewis, we may be heading into a crime scene.
I can't, I won't ask this of you."

"You won't have
to. We're friends. There's nothing more to say."

"One thing,
only." Shadows from the lowering sun shrouded Bennie, making him
seem part of the coming darkness. "Remember when I told you I
sensed something out there waiting?"

Croaker nodded. "But
if this is it," he said, "I recall you saying it was
waiting for us."

Bennie gave a sharp
jerk of his head. "Bueno."

Together, they went
swiftly across the lawn, past the fountain held aloft by stone
seahorses, up the steps and onto the porch. In front of the door,
Croaker said, "You get that thirty-eight replaced yet?"

Bennie drew a Smith &
Wesson from a shoulder holster and dropped the keys into Croaker's
palm.

With a constriction
in his throat, Croaker opened the door. Immediately, Bennie pushed
past him into the gloom of the small house. He could hear Bennie's
soft footfalls hurrying across the Mexican tiles of the foyer.
Croaker went in after him and switched on the lights. The bright
tropical colors of the living room seemed to leap at them. The room
was neat and clean and inviting. Nothing out of place here.

Croaker paused at the
edge of the dining alcove, staring down at what the flashlight beam
illuminated. "Bennie, look at this. See the last residue of
water shining? Someone had to stand here for this much rainwater to
accumulate. Either Sonia or someone else."

Bennie was breathing
softly but energetically, like a powerful engine at idle.

They turned on the
lights as they went methodically through the house. They checked the
only closed door in the hall on the way into the bedroom, found
linens and towels neatly stacked by color and pattern. Next came a
bathroom, the guest bedroom. Then they went into Sonia's bedroom.
Bennie stepped into the master bathroom, quickly emerged, shaking his
head. "Nada."

Croaker swung around,
took a hard second look at the bedspread. At first glance it appeared
as if it had been neatly made. But then as he noticed the repeat on
the pattern he could see that it was rucked in one direction. It was
like an arrow pointing to the phone on its night table. Looking at
the bedspread again it seemed to him as if someone lying on it had
reached for the phone, wriggling their body in the process—or
else been dragged across it.

Croaker walked around
the foot of the bed to the far side.

Bennie peered over
his shoulder. "What're you looking for?"

"I don't know,"
Croaker admitted as he carefully examined the carpet. Kneeling by the
side of the bed, he plucked a small clump of hairs that had been
embedded in the fibers of the carpet as if by a grinding motion. They
were the right color and length to be Sonia's. Judging by the roots,
they'd been ripped from her head.

He rose and, reaching
out with his biomechanical hand, plucked a stainless-steel nail at a
place where the pillow was exposed, as if the bed had been hurriedly
remade. "Sonia was a neat freak, wasn't she?"

Using one
stainless-steel nail Croaker gingerly lifted the bedspread away from
the pillows. The one on his side was slightly askew. He saw lipstick
smears over its center.

"What the hell?"
Bennie said.

Looking closer,
Croaker spotted a couple of eyelashes sticking to the pillowcase. He
let the pillow fall back as he looked around the bedroom.

"So where is
she?" Bennie whispered.

Croaker pointed to
the closet.

Bennie had replaced
the lost .38 with a .22. With the gun at the ready, he flipped the
door open. Nothing but clothes on racks and shoes neatly lined in
rows on the floor.

Croaker looked out
the window. "Her car?"

"Still in the
carport," Bennie said. "I checked it out."

Croaker, looking down
at the small answering machine, hit the Messages button with a
stainless-steel fingernail. The tape began to play. Two hang ups,
then a male voice said, "Sweetheart, it's Nestor. So looking
forward to seeing you in the morning. Love you for it, but you might
as well eat the food yourself. This boy isn't feeling any better.
But, hey, what the fuck, I've got to make the best of it, right? Love
you. 'Bye for now."

"This would be
before the power went off," Bennie said.

"Right. Sounds
like sometime last night." Croaker looked at Bennie. "Who's
Nestor? This was the last call before the power was cut."

"Nestor's a
dancer," Bennie said. "Or at least he was until he got
AIDS. Now he's dying slowly an' Sonia's made him, like, her pet
project."

"No kidding,"
Croaker said. "Think how Nestor feels." He tapped the top
of the answering machine. "You know where this guy lives?"

"Nah, but try
Sonia's speed-dialer. He's on there; you can ask him yourself."

Sure enough, Bennie
was right. Croaker wrote down Nestor's number, then they retraced
their steps through the house. The kitchen was the only room they
hadn't been in yet. Croaker stopped in the open doorway, flipped the
switch. Cold fluorescent light flickered on, and he stared,
wide-eyed. It appeared as if the entire contents of the refrigerator
were lined up in neat rows along the countertops. Cartons of milk and
orange juice, bottles of jam and ketchup and mustard, plastic
containers holding leftovers, a tub of butter. The rows were arranged
in ascending height. Every edge was perfectly aligned.

"What the hell
is this?" Bennie said.

Croaker was afraid he
might already know.

Bennie shook his
head. "All this stuff from inside the refrigerator. Why was it
taken out? You think Sonia did this?"

For a very long time,
Croaker did nothing. He stared at the refrigerator door.

Bennie, seeing where
he was looking, said, "Jesus." He passed a hand briefly
across his eyes. "Go on, amigo. We've come this far."

It didn't pay to
think too much, not at this juncture. Croaker closed his titanium and
steel fingers around the old-fashioned handle and pulled.

The door swung open
and he saw an interior totally devoid of food. The side walls had
been smeared with blood. On one was painted a triangle inside a
circle; on the other a dot within a square.

The shelves
themselves had been rearranged to make room for the one item which
sat inside. An item about the size of a twenty-pound turkey but one
not normally found in anyone's refrigerator.

Croaker tried to
close his ears to the slow drip-drip-drip of blood. A good size pool
had already formed on the bottom shelf.

It came from Sonia's
head and neck, which had been very neatly severed from the rest of
her, pale hazel eyes opened wide in a fixed expression of full-blown
terror.

Back in the bedroom,
Croaker walked slowly around until he stood in the open doorway to
the bathroom. "Someone standing in that spot in the alcove where
the rainwater is, you couldn't see him from here." He walked
along the side of the bed as Sonia had done hours earlier. "Not
from here, either."

Bennie looked at him.
"If that's where the killer stood, he chose the perfect spot to
watch her."

Croaker ignored the
sudden chill that went through him. "Smart, too. He didn't leave
any footprints. He must have left his shoes outside."

He pointed to the
pillowcase with Sonia's lipstick smears and eyelashes. "This is
how she was killed."

Bennie came over for
a closer look. "Smothered, you mean?"

Croaker nodded. "That
pillow over her face, pushed down hard. Sonia was no weakling. It had
to be someone with a great deal of strength."

"Or more than
one someone," Bennie added.

"Right,"
Croaker said.

He pointed to the
spot between them, where he had plucked the clump of Sonia's hairs
from the carpet. He could picture her as she lay there, helpless, the
back of her head being ground into the carpet, dying. He felt what he
always felt at the scene of a murder, as if a vise were squeezing
something vital out of his heart.

"She died right
here," he said.

Bennie's right hand
curled into a fist. Blood seemed to have surged into his neck and
cheeks. He gave an inarticulate cry, then lurched out of the bedroom.

"Bennie!"

Croaker caught up
with him in the kitchen. Bennie was reaching into the refrigerator.

"I apologize but
I have no intention of leaving her head here for strangers to find."
Bennie was taking the head out of the refrigerator. As he did so, he
averted his gaze. From Sonia's head or the bloody symbols? Croaker
wondered. Bennie began to wrap the head with extreme tenderness in
the first of the three towels he'd taken from the linen closet in the
hall. "I won't allow Sonia to suffer that indignity."

Croaker curled his
biomechanical fingers around Bennie's wrist. Bennie's head came
around, and he glared at Croaker with eyes suddenly the color of
flame. "Escuchame, señor. Men have perished for
that."

"What about
friends?"

"Amiga's
know better."

"Then you have
friends without backbones." Croaker took a step forward. "Tell
me, Bennie, is this really about Sonia's dignity?"

"Yes." But
Croaker would not back down and he would not be bluffed. Perhaps it
was just this toughness that appealed so profoundly to Bennie.

At length, his mouth
twisted in a parody of a smile. "Let me go, Lewis, and we will
speak of it."

He watched as Croaker
slowly and very deliberately unfurled his fingers one by one. "With
so little effort you could have ground to powder every bone in my
wrist." His voice had about it a disarming lassitude, as if he
were speaking of inconsequential matters while basking in the sun.
"You would have caused me great pain and no little
inconvenience." Now he did smile, and as he did so he revealed
the .22 he had drawn. "But I would have shot you in the belly.
Then I could have done anything to you, Lewis. Anything at all."

There was a terrible
stillness in the air, as if all at once the oxygen had been sucked
from the room by some monstrous creature that had appeared out of
nowhere.

Bennie shrugged. "But
this is no way for friends to talk—or even to think."

Bennie, jamming the
gun back into its holster, threw his hands wide. "What, are you
pissed, Lewis? Now we are no longer friends?"

Croaker stared at
him.

Bennie nodded. "Okay,
okay, you made your fuckin' point. God hears me, you got the cojones
of a Latino." He stuck out his hand. "Let no bad blood
begin here." When Croaker took it, he squeezed it with obvious
affection. "I wasn't lying. I got this thing "bout
death—it's got to be treated with a certain degree of respect,
otherwise"—he shrugged—"the spirit that lives
on is clouded with uncertainty." He waved a hand. "But,
you're right, that's not the whole story." He shook his head,
"No way I'm gonna let the police get clued in 'bout this, Lewis.
Their interference I cannot allow. Unequivocally. This is why I told
you to leave, why I didn't want you to become involved."

"Hey, Bennie,
wake the hell up. This is the scene of a major crime you're messing
with," Croaker said. "You'd better have a damn fine
explanation."

Bennie gave him an
evil grin. "The electrical line, the pillow, the answering
machine, I seem to remember you doing your share of tampering."
He calmly resumed folding the towels over Sonia's head. "But to
be less argumentative, my fuckin' business is explanations."
Beneath the razzle-dazzle ripostes, he seemed immensely relieved that
Croaker made no move to stop him this time.

"Give me one,
then."

"I never do
anything without just cause, remember that." He opened several
kitchen drawers in turn, rummaging through them. At length, he came
up with a roll of twine you use to truss up chickens or turkeys for
roasting. "As sure as we're amigos I know who killed
her." He began to bind the package with the twine. "That's
why Sonia's murder must be kept between the two of us." He
looked up at Croaker. "An' when you hear the history of it, I
religiously believe you'll agree with me."

Maria freaked out
when Bennie told her about Sonia. They took her back to Bennie's
place, a nineteen-room extravaganza built in the Venetian palazzo
style overlooking the Intracoastal on Forty-ninth Street in Miami
Beach, not two blocks from the Eden Roc Hotel across the water on
Collins Avenue. The place was exhausting. There were seven
bedrooms—one presumably for each night of the week—all
with open-air whirlpools. There was a European-style library, a
billiards room, a fully automated film screening theater, a
stone-encased wine cellar, even a louvered cigar patio off the formal
dining room. It had water frontage with a landing stage guarded by
ornate stone winged lions that appeared flown whole from the Grand
Canal in Venice. Tied up to it was a sleek midnight blue cigarette,
one of those sexy boats built for speed and nothing else.

Croaker and Bennie
walked out onto the dock. The lush, Deco colors of sunset dappled the
Intracoastal. Far out, over the southern ocean, the last remnants of
the afternoon's thunderstorm hung against the horizon like a black
and impenetrable curtain. A soft breeze ruffled their hair, washed
their faces with sea salt. All across South Florida, it was a time
for easy drinking and, if you were a fisherman, talk of the day's
exploits.

Though he had an
ice-cold Corona in his hand, Croaker did not feel like drinking. The
day's events gnawed at his heart. Bennie deposited the large round
package under his arm into the cigarette. The doctor he had summoned,
a small balding Colombian with a thin mustache that did not quite
cover a harelip, ministered to Maria behind the closed doors of one
of the many upstairs bedrooms.

Croaker stared at the
carefully wrapped package rolling with the waves of the Intracoastal.
Now Sonia's head was here, and with Bennie's call to her partners at
Lord Constantine that she was attending to a family emergency, there
was no reason for anyone to suspect foul play.

"There was
something even weirder than finding the decapitated head,"
Croaker said at length.

Deep aquamarine water
could be glimpsed through the carved stanchions of the stone
balustrade. It seemed a symbol of purity in which the cigarette's
cargo had been unceremoniously dropped.

Bennie took out a
cigar and went through the ritual of lighting up. "Yeah? Then I
missed it."

"'Cause it
wasn't there. No blood, Bennie. How come? She was smothered by a
pillow in her bedroom." A flash of Sonia's long legs spun
through Croaker's consciousness like a shining lure that's just been
struck by a game fish. He felt a wave of intense sadness mixed with
anger at how her life had been cut short. "We find her head in
the 'fridge and the only blood's dripping from it. There's not a
speck inside the house."

Bennie continued to
smoke, staring out at the light of day slowly being extinguished.

"The killer
didn't have a lot of time," Croaker continued. "So what did
he do after he smothered her? We know he didn't decapitate her inside
the house."

"But there were
those two parallel marks," Bennie said. "Suppose he dragged
her outside an' did her there?"

Croaker shook his
head. "Uh-uh. We checked the outside. Except for those two
parallel marks there was nothing. No blood, no viscera, no bits of
skin or bone. Besides, doing it outside's too risky. A neighbor or a
passerby could see him."

"So what the
hell happened?" Bennie asked.

"I have no
idea."

Croaker was abruptly
overwhelmed by an image of Sonia's surprised and happy face as he
merengued with her across the dance floor at the Shark Bar. Part of
him marveled at the calm with which he was dissecting the last few
hours' events. Another part of him was ashamed.

Bennie must have had
some inkling of what was happening. He kept his own counsel as
Croaker turned away. Taking a deep breath, Croaker leaned against the
balustrade and watched a white fishing boat plying the dark, purling
waters of the Intracoastal. As it passed, its wake sent wavelets
sloshing against the wooden pylons so that the cigarette rolled at
its berth.

He could see Stone
Tree, limned against the kind of lime and orange sunsets you got only
in the Keys. The Seminole was aft in the small boat as he navigated
it through the mangrove islets. "Do you see it?"
he said. Croaker thought he was going to point but he didn't. "I
don't see anything," Croaker replied. "It's getting
dark." Stone Tree had said, "Not for me,"
telling Croaker as much as he needed to know.

The doctor emerged
from Bennie's house, came down the marble stairs to join them.
"Maria's resting easily now," he said in Spanish. "She's
obviously had a difficult time." He knew better than to ask the
cause of her shock. "With what I gave her she'll sleep deeply,
and chances are when she wakes up she'll be fine. If not—"
A card appeared between his fingers, and Bennie took it. "This
is the name of a friend of mine. He's a counselor. If your friend is
in need . . ' He tapped his mustache, as if it had tilted out of
place. "You have my assurance that he is the soul of
discretion."

Bennie showed the
doctor out to the part of the carpark where his emerald BMW stood
beside the Hummer and Croaker's T-bird. Croaker saw no money change
hands. That was not how Bennie did business. Debt was amassed and
discharged in intangible ways. Favors, influence, accommodations,
were the invisible but potent coin of his realm. Bennie disappeared
into the house, presumably to look in on Maria.

Watching the lights
coming on along the strand of Collins Avenue Croaker wondered just
what his friendship with Bennie and Sonia had gotten him into.
Suddenly, shockingly, he felt that the moment he had crossed over the
Little River Canal this afternoon he had become part of Bennie's
shadowy world, and he did not yet know what that might entail. He
only had the unsettling presentiment that everything in his life had
changed.

Shaking off this evil
feeling, he used his cell phone to place three calls to friends in
different sectors of the federal government. Two were unavailable,
and he left detailed messages on their voice mail. The third answered
and, after hearing about the desperate plight Rachel was in,
transferred the call to a doctor pal of his at Walter Reed Hospital.
The doctor pretty much reiterated what Jenny Marsh had told Croaker.

"Major organs
are in hellishly short supply," he said. "And because she's
a user I'm afraid her chances of jumping the line are nil." He
paused. "The one good thing is she's in very capable hands. I
know Dr. Marsh by reputation, and she's first-rate. If there's a way
to save your niece you can be sure shell find it. But if the
situation is as you have described it . . ." He sighed. "I
wish I had better news for you, Mr. Croaker. Right now, I don't think
there's anything anyone can do except pray for a miracle."

Croaker thanked the
doctor and hung up. He immediately dialed a local number, then
entered his Anti-Cartel Task Force access code. As a freelance
without official ties to the ACTF, he was given a temporary code each
time he was hired. Apparently the last code still worked because he
received clearance. He punched in Wade Forrest's extension. Croaker
had worked with Forrest before in ACTF. He was fairly high up in the
organization and rising. Unlike Croaker, who was a sporadically used
freelancer, Forrest was a career man to the core. Though he'd come to
Miami from Washington for a specific mission, he'd opted to stay on.
Croaker didn't necessarily like Forrest—he was loud,
overbearing, and something of a bully. But Croaker respected him; he
was loyal. The first rule that Croaker's father had taught him in law
enforcement was that loyalty was the one commodity you couldn't buy,
borrow, or steal.

Forrest wasn't
answering his line, which was not surprising. Out in the field, most
likely. What was surprising, however, was that no human voice came on
the line. As far as Croaker knew, the ACTF field offices were manned
twenty-four hours hours a day. In fact, Croaker thought he heard the
distant clicks and whirs he associated with an automatic call
switching device. Perhaps it was just his imagination because a
moment later Wade Forrest's recorded voice led him through the
standard voice mail menu. He left a Most Urgent message. Maybe, just
maybe, Forrest had connections with UNOS. But he'd have to speak to
him to find out.

He disconnected just
as Bennie returned. His friend was carrying a small zippered flight
bag.

"Okay, Bennie.
It's time for a little show-and-tell."

Bennie nodded.
"Bueno." He rolled the cigar meditatively between
his lips. "Time an' place, Lewis. In my business they are
everything." Bending over, he stowed the flight bag in the
cigarette then deftly slipped the aft line, jumped down into the
boat. "Andale, muchacho," he said. "We have
important business on the Atlantic."

As Croaker stepped
into the boat, Bennie scrambled to let go the bow line. Then, back in
the shallow cockpit, he fired the powerful engines. The cigarette
gave a throaty roar and a puff of blue diesel smoke as Bennie turned
her out into the Intracoastal.

The party lights of
Miami Beach swept by. On their left, Croaker could see a long line of
white limos disgorging a festive wedding party into the gargantuan
lobby of the Eden Roc Hotel. Flashbulbs popped like sunspots, and
there was a burst of wild applause as the bride pirouetted around the
grinning groom for the kneeling photographers.

The bride, who looked
like a model, sleek in fitted white satin and organza, reminded him
of Sonia. He had a terrible flash of the model's head bouncing like a
gaily striped beachball down the staircase of the Eden Roc while
flashbulbs fired like cannons. Taking a deep breath, he wrenched his
attention away.

Bennie veered off to
starboard, heading at low speed for the outlet into Biscayne Bay.
This far south, you needed to take the bay to pick up the channel
between the tip of Miami Beach and Fisher Island in order to get to
the Atlantic Ocean.

Croaker clambered
over to Bennie's side. " 'There's something out there waiting
for us' " he said over the heavy thrum of the diesels. "Isn't
that what you said, Bennie?"

Bennie nodded. "Close
enough." Water, churned to white froth, plumed from the rear of
the cigarette. "You know, Lewis, there's a certain, what?,
inevitability 'bout life. Like with me being in the line of
work I'm in. I've made enemies, I've been up-front 'bout that. Okay,
that goes with the territory, but there are enemies and then there
are enemies."

Croaker could smell
something like fish entrails surfacing in the Intracoastal. It was
sharp and immediate, like a hit of ammonia; it made his pulse pound.

"God hears me,"
Bennie was saying, "I've made enemies like that. Case in point.
There are, like, these two brothers. Antonio an' Heitor: the Bonitas.
An', shit, not jus' brothers. Identical twins. I mean to tell you,
Lewis, these cabrones are some bad motherfucking
sonsofbitches." Bennie's hands made complex patterns in the air.
"It's like, how can I put it? It's like these bastardos
popped outta their mother's womb pissed off at the world, know what I
mean? They're malicious as shit and, what's worse, they get off on
it."

Croaker eyed him.
"What do these Bonita twins have to do with Sonia's death?"

A subtle change had
come over Bennie, and Croaker was struggling to figure out just what
it was. "Everything," Bennie said. "They whacked her
cold. I know it"—he smacked the left side of his chest
with the heel of his hand—"here."

"That's a mighty
big assumption to make." But, in truth, Croaker did not
immediately disbelieve him. On the contrary. He had a suspicion that
another piece of the enigma that was Bennie Milagros was about to
reveal itself. "What're you going on—besides pure
instinct, I mean."

"Spoken like a
true detective." Bennie was chomping so hard on his cigar he was
slowly making a mess of it. "About the Bonitas, God hears me, I
got a lot more than hunches." Bennie maneuvered out into
Biscayne Bay. House lights on either side lent the sky a soft magenta
glow. All around them the water was dark, mysterious with man-made
reflections. "This is why I can't have the cops involved. It was
Antonio an' Heitor all right. They whacked Sonia as, like, some kinda
warning to me."

"What makes you
so sure?"

Bennie's eyes caught
a cusp of the starboard running light, and for one brief instant,
copper spun in their depths. "It's happened before."

Croaker didn't want
to say anything at all. It was like having a dangerous fish on the
line—sometimes all that was required of you was to let the line
pay out.

Bennie had the kind
of look on his face someone would have if he was about to lie down on
a bed of nails. "I mentioned my sister Rosa, didn't I?"

Croaker nodded. "In
the parking lot of the Shark Bar. You said she died five years ago."

Bennie's hands worked
the controls and the cigarette lurched forward, up on plane. "Didn't
tell you, though, how she died."

Croaker grabbed a
handrail as he felt the slap of the salt spray on his face. Bennie's
eyes were slitted by the wind, which was quartering out of the west.
He broke out a pair of heavy windbreak-ers, threw one to Croaker. Out
on the open water at night, moving at speed, the chill was instantly
penetrating, and it would only get colder once they hit the Atlantic.
As they bounced over the calm of the bay, a double line of cormorants
swooped overhead like the soft flutter of a ribbon. He tilted his
head back, watching them for a moment, inscrutable black runes
against an indigo sky.

"Time an'
place," he murmured as if to himself. "The Bonitas an' I go
way back, Lewis. We grew up in the same neighborhood in Asuncion.
Just like Sonia an' her brother. An' because of this, how you say,
affiliation, they are people with whom I made a grave mistake."

"What was that?"

"I took them on
as clients." Bennie shook his head. "That was eight years
ago. God hears me, that was the blackest day of my life." He
shrugged. "But, see, I was very young. An', you know, when
you're young you're, like, convinced you know all the secrets of the
universe. Wisdom equates with enthusiasm; it seems so simple, what
life can be reduced to."

The cigarette
juddered and hummed happily as it gathered speed across the bay. The
expanse was dotted with islands, ablaze with light. In the distance,
Croaker could see the MacArthur Causeway that ran from Twelfth Street
in Miami to Fifth Street in Miami Beach. "So you took the
Bonitas on as clients," he said. Bennie adjusted their course to
starboard at the approach of a boat from the opposite direction.
"Antonio an' Heitor are in the misery business, and let me tell
you they're quite fuckin' adept at it. Drugs, white slavery, arms
shipments, these are their true businesses in South America, although
they make mucho dinero in the minerals company left to them
by their mother. Copper, tin, lithium, beryllium, they're market
movers in these ores and they do an increasing trade with the U.S. So
much so, in fact, that in the past two years they've opened
subsidiary offices in Miami, New York, and Washington."

"D.C.?"

Bennie nodded. "Part
of their business comes from selling directly to the U.S.
government." He readjusted their course to the southeast. "But
the minerals business bores them. These twins live for their fun. In
South America, elements within the governments call on them from time
to time to disappear people—rivals, political enemies,
intellectuals amassing too much of a following."

"Did you know
what they did when you took them on as clients?"

"No, but I
learned very fuckin' fast."

"So what you
discovered was they're in effect assassins for hire." Bennie
spat over the side. "If only that's all they were." They
were heading directly for the MacArthur Causeway. South of that,
they'd round the tip of Miami Beach and head out into the Atlantic.
"See, here's the thing, Lewis. Antonio an' Heitor, they have,
how should I put it?, very specialized tastes. They don't just, like,
kill someone; that wouldn't be fun at all. They disappear 'em; they
warehouse them. Then, at their leisure, they spend a great deal of
time having their bit of fun. When it's over, they harvest the organs
an' sell 'em to the highest bidder—usually that's a minister in
the South American government or a member of a minister's family or a
close personal friend or a political ally. You get the picture."
Bennie looked at Croaker. "In this unholy fashion, the Bonitas
have amassed something far more valuable than mere capital—they
possess the kind of power you an' I merely dream about." He
bared his teeth in a sour grin, "They own people, heart and
soul. Whatever they want in South America is theirs for the taking,
no questions asked. Down there, they are revered as gods. Except gods
could never be half as evil as these two."

Bennie swept the
cigarette around a marker buoy. "Now they've moved their
operation here, Lewis. You see? They killed Sonia and took her body.
Why do you think they did that?"

Croaker, staring out
at the glittering lights along the bay, did not have to answer. If
Bennie was right in all his suppositions, the Bonitas were harvesting
her organs. What if it were true? For a moment, he was overcome by a
terrifying emotion. He couldn't help but think that they must have a
healthy kidney that could save Rachel's life. Could it be that
somewhere in Florida there was a black market in human organs? Then
reality struck him with the force of a hammer blow and he realized
what he had been thinking. The stench of his own desperation
disgusted him. What had his father told him? Desperation could so
easily lead to corruption. What Antonio and Heitor had done to Sonia
was horror enough, but his momentary response to it cut so close to
the bone it laid bare his marrow. It made him feel unclean, unworthy
to be Rachel's champion. In that instant, he felt an enmity to the
Bonitas so profound it wrenched his heart. They had touched him
deeply and personally, made him for an instant vulnerable, and that
he could not allow.

Croaker and Bennie in
the cigarette passed beneath the causeway in uneasy silence. The
specter of the Bonitas, who seemed from Bennie's description to be
imbued with an unnatural potency, hung in the night like a malevolent
spirit.

"Bennie,"
Croaker said almost gently, "what happened with your sister?
What happened with Rosa?"

"Ah!" It
was almost a cry of anguish, ripped from Bennie's heart. "Five
years ago, there was a particularly difficult negotiation with an
American company whose market share in ores and metals would give the
Bonitas, like, lickety-quick entree into the States. They told me to
get it for them at all costs. That I tried to do, but this bastard,
he knew how much they wanted his business an' he wouldn't go for the
deals I proposed. One night he ran into them at a club an' he laughed
in their faces. God hears me, that pissed them off something fierce."

Bennie took the
cigarette in a breathtakingly fast arc around the tip of Miami Beach.
Pale spray fountained up like the tail of a peacock. "They
couldn't whack him 'cause then they'd lose what they wanted most.
But, like I said, they were born pissed at the world an' now they
were royally pissed. They had to blame someone for the affront, so
they blamed me." He was looking out at the inky darkness of the
sea. His shoulders and neck were lost within the billowing folds of
the windbreaker, giving him the aspect of a wary softshell turtle.

"I hadn't done
my job. If I had, the affront would never have taken place. So they
told me. I was their employee but I didn't understand the true
meaning of working for them. So they told me." His eyes squeezed
shut for a moment, and when they opened they were glossy with
incipient tears. His knuckles were white around the steering wheel.
"They took my Rosa, Lewis, mi hermana linda. They
disappeared her, had their ungodly fun with her. An' then, to make
sure I'd learned my lesson, they delivered her head to my office."

Croaker, standing
very close to Bennie, could tell he was shaking. "What happened
then?" he asked softly.

Bennie barked out a
laugh as he came to a new heading. They were in the Atlantic now,
cutting through rolling swells as the wind picked up. "What
d'you think happened? I made the fuckin' deal for them. It was
unholy. I abased myself for them an' got the job done. Like I shoulda
done in the first place. So they told me." He shook his head
ruefully. "So then, three weeks after the deal is signed, they
drag this guy out of his bed an' work on him for, what?, thirty-six
hours, must have been, at least. His heart's in the president of
Argentina an' his liver's in the brother of the finance minster of
Brazil. He paid for his affront. God hears me, we all fuckin' paid."

"But that was
five years ago, Bennie." Croaker, bracing himself more firmly,
jammed his freezing hands into the pockets of his windbreaker. "Why
would they start again with Sonia?"

"They have long
memories, you know? I thought they were through with me, but I was
wrong." Bennie put the cigarette full out and they thundered
across the water with teeth-jarring bumps as they sliced through
rolling wave crests. He turned to Croaker briefly. "An' you know
the worst part, Lewis, the part that eats at my heart like a demon?
They were right about me, Antonio an'Hei-tor. Deep in my soul I
didn't want to make that deal five years ago. I didn't do my best. I
wanted out from under them. I wanted the deal to fail. But I didn't
consider the, like, consequences. I was sure I could outwit them when
no one else could." He thumped his chest with his fist. "I
killed Rosa. As much as them, I am to blame for her death." His
head whipped away. "You see now how life can be when you're
young and know all the answers? You find out quick enough, Lewis,
that you not only don't know the answers, you're clueless 'bout which
fuckin' questions to ask."

His left hand jerked
back on the throttle and the cigarette came off plane, slowing. The
engine burbled as they rocked in the swells.

"We're here,"
Bennie said. He gave Croaker the wheel, then pulled out the flight
bag and opened it. "Kill the engine," he said.

All hard sound
ceased. In its place crept the soft susurrus of the sea. They were
alone on the ocean. Land was a thin strand of light far off on the
western horizon, a glow like the time-altered radiance from a distant
star.

"Now this is
important," Bennie said, "so pay attention." He leaned
forward, dipped his hand in a small clay pot, daubed something black
across Croaker's forehead, cheeks, and chin. Then he did the same to
himself.

"Bennie, what
the hell are we doing?"

"Shh."
Bennie put his forefinger to his lips. "We are saying goodbye to
Sonia."

"This"—Croaker
threw his arms wide—"is your idea of a funeral?"

"Not my idea,"
Bennie said. "My grandfather's." He took up the
towel-wrapped package that was Sonia's head. "We can proceed
now. With the soot hiding our features, no spirit will be able to
recognize us and pull us down as we set Sonia's spirit on its journey
to the other side."

"Bennie—"

"No! Be still!"
he hissed. "This is something sacred I got from my grandfather.
He was a healer an' he, like, knew things. Escu-chame. Until
we set Sonia's spirit on its path we're vulnerable now to forces we
can't control or understand." His eyes bored into Croaker's. "Es
verdad, Lewis." It's the truth. "You ready to let the world
in?"

Croaker nodded. "I'm
ready."

Covered with lines of
black soot, Bennie's face seemed strange, as if his features had
undergone some metamorphosis. Croaker put the fingertips of his right
hand to his face, wondering if the same thing had happened to him.

From out of the
flight bag, Bennie had produced a small iron brazier. "Listen to
me, Lewis. Our world consists of three things, okay? Natural law,
which has nothing to do with man-made law; energy; and consciousness.
Now, consciousness is what defines you an' me—human beings, I
mean. We can reason; animals can't.

They're bound solely
by instinct. I mean, we have instinct, too, but we've also got
consciousness. Sometimes that's good; you know, we invent, we
strive—our progress comes mainly from our consciousness. But,
lots of times, consciousness gets in the way of instinct, an' that,
amigo, is no good at all."

"You know,"
Croaker said, "you have a spiritual side that's both charming
and surprising."

As they spoke Bennie
was mixing powders poured from plastic phials. He added what appeared
to be dried leaves and small twigs, ground them together in the
bottom of the brazier. Out of the wind, he lit the material and
silently beckoned for Croaker to crouch down beside him. The brazier
was between them. Croaker saw Bennie's nostrils dilate as he drank in
the smoke, and he did the same. Immediately, he was pierced with the
scents of peppermint, cedar, and orange, as well as other odors,
unfamiliar, pungent and earthy as chilies. He drank them in like food
and, almost automatically, his eyes closed. Gradually, as he
continued to breathe in the aromatic smoke, he felt his body growing
heavier and heavier, as if he were becoming more sensitive to the
earth's gravity. Then, there came a brief wave of dizziness, and he
felt as if an umbilical had been cut. He was adrift, as if his body
had taken flight and, like the cormorants high above, floated on the
thermals.

In the darkness he
heard Bennie's voice: "Boats are vessels for the spirits an' for
the dead. My grandfather told me that boats had three uses for his
Guarani ancestors. He said they all could be traced back to the
migrations across the oceans the ancient peoples made. The migrations
were, you know, harder than we could ever imagine an' sometimes they,
like, took a lifetime. The first use is to exorcise sickness an' evil
spirits; the second use is to find the lost soul of a patient near
death; the third is to ferry the soul of the dead to the shores of
the next life."

Silence, save for the
lapping of the waves against the fiberglass hull of the cigarette.
But, as in a dream, the boat seemed to rock far below them, part of
another realm. He and Bennie existed as spirits around the heat of a
blazing sun.

Through closed eyes
and drug-heightened senses, Croaker saw Bennie rise and, leaning out
over the ocean, gently deposit Sonia's remains into the water.
Through closed eyes he saw the towel- wrapped package bobbing on a
wave crest. Over it spun a shape he could not define. Then it
resolved itself into what looked like an outline of a human eye with
a double iris. At that instant, Sonia's head was sucked down into a
midnight black trough never to reappear. Croaker opened his eyes,
blinking. Bennie was sitting across from him as if he had never
moved. But, looking around the cigarette, Croaker could find no trace
of the towel-wrapped package. In a last sharp inhalation of
commingled scents, an image appeared in his mind for the space of a
heartbeat and then winked out. It was of Sonia plummeting like a
stone into the fastness of dark waters, running with currents and
certain mystery.

Croaker slept like a
dead man all the way back to Bennie's. He dreamed of dancing with
Sonia. They were in the dark but he knew it was the Shark Bar. He
swept her around the dance floor in long, exhilarating arcs, feeling
her body warm and strong as an athlete's coming close to him, then
pushed apart by the dictates of the dance steps. She returned again
and again to his arms, and each time she did it was like a renewal,
another life being built from scratch. Her breath was warm and
fragrant on his cheek, and her laughter reverberated like sweet bells
on a mountainside. When they passed through a beam of diamond-bright
light, it sizzled the red highlights in her hair, picked out the
green motes in her eyes. And all at once he knew it wasn't Sonia he
was dancing with but Jenny Marsh, Rachel's doctor. She lifted a hand
and made a sign that shimmered the air with gold dust: an outline of
a human eye with a double iris. A sudden movement caught his
attention, and he turned to find Sonia's bloody head rolling down the
steps of the Eden Roc Hotel in a welter of green sea grape and
translucent jellyfish. Out of the watery depths at the bottom of the
stairs rose a mammoth tiger shark. Opening its jaws, it engulfed all
that remained of her. Croaker had one terrifying look into its
unfathomable eye before it vanished beneath the black waves.

He awoke in a sweat
to find the midnight blue cigarette already tied up at Bennie's
private dock. Scrubbing his hands across his face, he rose. He
wondered if he'd dreamed Sonia's entire funeral. For a moment he
watched his friend hose down the cigarette. "Bennie, what
exactly do the Bonita twins want?" Bennie wiped his hands on his
trousers. "Huh, they're mad as hatters. Who can say what's in
the minds of madmen? Their hearts have been, like, burned to fuckin'
ash by their insanity. In that event, they are beyond understanding."

"Sometimes,
yes," Croaker said. "But sometimes madness has a purpose.
It used to be my job to find it."

"They, maybe,
want me dead." Bennie waved a hand. "Forget
maybe—definitely. But they're like gods, you see?
Those whom the gods destroy they first make mad. They want
to drive me mad."

"Are
they mad, Bennie?"

Bennie took up his
flight bag and climbed out of the cigarette. He lit a cigar while
Croaker followed. "You know, in the old days, when the world was
less, like, complicated, hat makers were slowly poisoned by the
mercury used in making hatbands. It, like, seeped into their
fingertips while they were hand-working the satin an' felt, an'
eventually they went, like, nutso, insane." He blew out a cloud
of aromatic smoke. "I religiously believe something of that
nature happened to the Bonita twins. They were poisoned in their
mother's womb by evil spirits, who the fuck knows what."

He turned away
abruptly and went up the marble stairs toward the house.

In Bennie's huge
dining room they shared a charbroiled three-inch-thick porterhouse
Bennie ordered from a place in Miami. With it came cottage fries that
Croaker knew even as he was eating them would give him indigestion.
Ravenous, he ate them anyway. Afterward, Bennie brought out the
mescal, but by that rime Croaker had had more than enough altered
awareness.

Coffee he could deal
with, and as Bennie went about fixing espresso from scratch, Croaker
said, "I'd like to know something."

Bennie was grinding
the dark, rich beans. "Shoot."

Croaker took a
breath, exhaled it slowly, "When the Bonitas delivered your
sister's head, were there symbols like the ones we found in Sonia's
refrigerator?"

Bennie's hand slipped
and he had to fumble with the Off button. "Why d'you ask?"
He was facing the kitchen cabinets and Croaker could not see his
face.

"Because when
you took Sonia's head to wrap it you wouldn't look at those symbols."
Croaker stood next to his friend. "I took that to mean they had
some significance for you."

"Amateur
shrink." Bennie dumped the ground beans into the top of the
espresso maker.

"I know you well
enough to see that you don't ever necessarily say what's in the back
of your mind."

Bennie turned the
espresso maker on. Then he stood quite still. Even so, Croaker could
feel emotion emanating from him in waves.

"Okay, well…"
Bennie broke off, took up a paring knife, and began to deftly peel
away the rind of a lemon in thin strips, "See, the thing is…
those symbols…" He bit his lip. "Those symbols, they
are, like, the cornerstones of my grandfather's world." The
scars on Bennie's face shone livid in the light. "I mean they're
central to his beliefs, the magic he … the magic he taught the
Bonitas."

For a long moment,
there was only stark silence in the vast house. The sudden hiss of
the espresso maker made them both start.

"The Bonitas
were pupils of your grandfather's?" Croaker said.

Bennie nodded
unhappily as he got out tiny cups, dropped a curl of lemon rind into
each. "He initiated them in the Guarani healing arts of the
indigenous people of my country. It is called by the Guarani Heta
I, which in loose translation means Many Waters." Bennie's
eyes were wide and staring, as if his sight extended through the
fixed past into the unknowable future. "But what they did,
Lewis, was unforgivable. They took the healing arts and in their
madness perverted Heta I into a terrible force for evil."

Croaker thought about
this chilling new strand to what was fast becoming a far-reaching web
as Bennie poured the espresso. He said, "What do the symbols
mean?"

"They're power
gatherers. There's one for each cardinal point in the compass. When
you have them all together there is a summoning of the spirits, a
nexus of power."

Croaker accepted a
cup. "But there were only two in Sonia's refrigerator."

Bennie nodded. "The
third is a cross within three concentric circles; the fourth is the
outline of a human eye with two irises." He took up his cup but
he didn't drink. "See, each initiate takes a symbol as his or
her own. The two-irised eye was my grandfather's symbol."

Croaker felt a small
chill creep down his spine. He told Bennie about seeing that symbol
in his vision and in his dream.

Bennie slowly put
down his cup and walked out of the kitchen. Curious, Croaker went
after him. Bennie opened a slider and went out onto the side porch.
When Croaker came up beside him, he saw that his friend had gone
pale.

"Bennie, you
okay?"

Bennie seemed to
think about this a long time. At last, he said, "To be truthful,
Lewis, I'm not at all sure." He gripped the railing and stared
out at the reflections of lights swimming like electric eels in the
water. "When my grandfather died, it rained for ten days without
a break. I was fifteen an' I can remember sitting in that rain. It
was a cold rain. My grandfather died on the coldest day of winter. He
was pulled from the Paraguay River by fishermen. He lived by the
river. He was very old by then, past ninety, and everyone said, he
must've, you know, lost his balance in the dark and fallen in, hit
his head on the rocks. I never believed that, though. My grandfather
was so surefooted he could, like, catch fish with his feet. I saw him
do it many times. It always made me laugh."

Bennie's arms were
like steel beams as he leaned against the railing, and he hadn't yet
regained his color. "Anyway, my grandfather, being a healer, had
to be burned. We built a funeral pyre and placed him on top of it. We
slaughtered his favorite horse, cooked its flesh, and ate it to honor
him while the pyre burned. The wood burned despite the rain. Everyone
said it was a miracle."

Bennie put his head
down. His chest was heaving as if he were having an asthmatic attack.
Croaker heard the crickets and the tree frogs as if from far away. "I
sat in a tree," Bennie said, "an' watched the body burn. My
grandfather, he always told me he was part animal. Once, when I asked
him which one, he smiled an' said, 'When I die you watch me closely.
You'll find out.'"

Bennie shook his
head. "You have to understand something, Lewis. When my
grandfather died, I was terrified. See, he wanted to initiate me—he
wanted me to keep the traditional Guarani ways alive. I refused. I
don't know why. Maybe I didn't want the responsibility that would,
like him, tie me forever to Asuncion. He had so many people who
depended on his healing. I already had money on my mind, and an
unquenchable itch to see the world." Bennie took out a cigar,
stared at it. "Better to admit to that than the alternative:
that maybe, deep down, I didn't really believe."

Bennie looked away
and shrugged. "So my grandfather, he turned to Antonio an'
Heitor. God hears me, they needed a strong hand. Their father died
when they were young an' their mother, well, the best that was ever
said of her was that she was highborn. That she was, but she was also
some kind of witch. My grandfather, I think he, like, felt sorry for
them. He passed the traditions on to them, tried to give them some
kind of sense of family."

"Why were you
afraid when he died?" Croaker asked.

Bennie stared at his
cigar for some time. "Oh, well, you know…" He tried
to smile, but when he looked up he had a kind of haunted look in his
eyes. "I was pissed at him—for, you know, making me feel
guilty, for being who he was, I guess. I don't know. Anyway, shit, I
stopped talking to him. So when he died… Jesus, I was beside
myself."

"So what
happened?"

Bennie lit his cigar.
The ritualistic motions seemed to calm him somewhat. When he'd got it
going to his satisfaction, he said, "I sat in the tree, you
know, watching the flames defy the rain. I was scared and, like,
entranced at the same time. I kept my eyes on that charred body
because I was sure I'd see his spirit emerging as, like, a bird or
something. I mean, birds were sacred to us."

"But you
didn't."

Bennie blew out a
cloud of smoke. His voice had taken on an odd inflection, rising in
pitch as if he were again that teenager in Asuncion. "See, there
needed to be a lot of water. That's why it rained for ten days
without letup."

"Why, Bennie?"

"Because when my
grandfather's spirit finally did emerge it wasn't as a bird or a
horse or an ocelot." He turned to look into Croaker's eyes and
the light from inside the house made his face shine like the moon.
"What he had become, Lewis, was a shark."

"Bennie—"

"No, no. I saw
what I saw." Bennie waved a hand. "That beast rose from the
flames, from the white-hot ashes an' it, like, swam into the torrent
of rain, Like smoke, it vanished into the black clouds." He took
the cigar out of his mouth. "That tiger shark that took my wahoo
yesterday, the symbols—my grandfather's symbol—that came
to you during Sonia's funeral … I told you we were vulnerable
to spirits." He put his hand on Croaker's shoulder. "You
killed the shark, Lewis, an' now, God hears me, my grandfather's
spirit, he's here." Bennie pressed the fingertips of his other
hand into the muscle above Croaker's heart. "That tiger shark
was no coincidence. Of all the fishermen on the ocean he found us."
Bennie leaned into Croaker as he whispered, "Lewis, my
grandfather's, like, trying to tell us something."

"Such as?"
Croaker said.

Bennie squeezed
Croaker's shoulder. "Like, maybe, who killed him. He can't pass
fully into the netherworld until his murderer's found an', like,
brought to justice."

Croaker stared at
Bennie. The truly curious thing, he thought, was that in the
aftermath of everything that had happened this evening, the profound
spirituality of Bennie's grandfather's world seemed perfectly
believable. He shook his head. Maybe it was the residue of whatever
he'd inhaled on the cigarette or maybe he was just going nuts. In any
case, it was getting late. He glanced at his watch.

"You gotta
split?" Bennie asked.

Croaker nodded.
"Yeah. I've got to get to the hospital, check up on Rachel."

They walked slowly
back inside the house.

"'Bout that…"
Bennie paused as they came to the front door. "I've been
thinking 'bout your niece." He took Croaker's hand in his, laid
something in it.

It was a dark green
stone, perfectly oval, worn smooth in the way only centuries of water
could accomplish.

Croaker looked up at
him. "What's this?"

Bennie took Croaker
by the arm, led him out the front door into the gentle night.
Crickets and tree frogs made a soft susurrus that was almost
hypnotic.

Bennie said, "Once,
as a little boy, I saw my grandfather heal a woman's arm shriveled by
disease. How is this possible, you ask." He pointed above their
heads. "Like that tree frog who doesn't have a clue about our
conversation, you haven't got a clue 'bout this healing process. You
don't have the healer's consciousness, so you don't get that. 'Bout
this, you're like that tree frog up there. To him, this conversation
can't, like, exist 'cause he doesn't have the ability to get it. But
that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, see?"

Croaker nodded

"This
spirit-stone, it belonged to my grandfather." Bennie's voice was
as quiet as if he were in church. "It's very powerful. I want
you to put it on Rachel's chest." He put his hand over Croaker's
fingers, making him grasp the stone. "It's a healer's stone. But
I'm not a healer, Lewis, and neither are you. So the energy in it's,
like, limited. Still, who knows, it may help in some way."

Croaker thought he
felt a kind of warmth emanating from it, but perhaps it was just his
imagination. "I'll take good care of it."

Bennie looked at it
almost wistfully. "You know what they say about Guarani healers,
Lewis. They never die. Their power, like, remains."

Bennie walked Croaker
to the car. Silence enveloped them. As Croaker opened the T-bird's
door, Bennie said, "Esuchame, Lewis. I have a favor to
ask of you."

"Anything,
buddy."

Bennie nodded. "Two
days from now I want to charter your boat."

Croaker laughed.
"You're giving me more business? What kind of favor is that?"

"It's not for
fishing, Lewis. I need it, like, for the night."

Croaker frowned.
"This isn't for anything illegal, is it, Bennie?"

"No, nothin'
like that. But—" He looked around, as if the rustling
palms might be studded with directional microphones. "But this
is strictly between us. You can't tell anyone—not even the
people in your office. Far as they know, you're using the boat for
yourself. Okay?"

"Sure, but you
have your own boat."

"Cigarette's no
good for this run." Bennie clapped him on the shoulder. "Thanks,
buddy. This is, like, super important. I don't know anyone else I can
trust." He held the T-bird's door open wide for Croaker.
"Remember. In two days."

He sure was being
damn secretive, Croaker thought. Then he shrugged mentally. What the
hell. What were friends for, anyway?

"Bennie."
On impulse, he embraced his friend. "Whether it helps Rachie or
not, thanks for your grandfather's spirit-stone."

3

It was after nine; it
had taken him an hour and a half to get back to Royal Poinciana
Hospital in Palm Beach.

Matty was asleep when
he arrived. The nurses in the Dialysis Unit had let his sister sleep
on a bed in one of the empty cubicles. Croaker tiptoed past her on
the way to see his niece. He asked the duty nurse about Rachel's
condition. When she told him it hadn't changed, he wondered whether
that was good or bad. Perhaps it was a little of both. Barring a
miracle, it was the best they could hope for at the moment.

Rachel lay as he had
left her, on her back, unconscious, hooked up to so many hoses she
looked like some postmodern mythic creature, part human, part
machine. Shadows still as death lay across her like shrouds, and
Croaker felt an unspent shout of denial welling up inside him. He
could not let her drift away into oblivion. He had to find some way
to get her a healthy kidney.

When he sat down
beside her, he found that he was trembling. He slipped his right hand
into hers, trying to warm it. It seemed to him that memories of
Sonia, brief but poignant, mingled with his awareness of Rachel,
almost as if their two souls shared a space on another plane of
existence. Linked in a cosmic and unknowable manner. Perhaps this
sense was his way of feeling closer to a niece he had longed to know,
or, perhaps, tonight of all nights was special and what he felt had
some basis in truth. In any case, he would not laugh at himself for
harboring such odd and spiritual thoughts.

He dug out the
spirit-stone Bennie had given him. Its dark green color seemed dull,
muted by the fluorescent lights. Croaker turned it over a couple of
times between his fingers. It looked to him no different from any of
a thousand such wave-washed stones one might pick up along a
seashore.

Nevertheless, he set
it carefully between Rachel's breasts. It lay there, dark and
seemingly heavy, creasing the sheet with which she was covered. He
looked at her face, willing her back to life, but of course nothing
happened.

He waited for what
seemed an extraordinarily long time while the many machines ticked
over, the fluids dripped into her, and she continued to drift deep
inside her coma.

At last, he reached
out to pluck the spirit-stone from atop her chest. His fingers closed
over it, and he felt a kind of warmth that almost burned him.

"Who's there?"

He started just as if
someone had jabbed him with a needle.

He leaned over her
bed. "Rachel?"

Now that she was
awake, he could see her ice blue eyes for himself, so vivid they were
riveting.

"Who are you?"

"I'm your uncle
Lew. Mommy's brother." He moved into the light so she could see
him better. "She's right outside. I'll go get her."

"No!"

It was just a whisper
but it held him as immobile as if it had been a shout. He could feel
her grip on his right hand, as if she were using all the strength she
had left to keep him at her side.

"My God, Uncle
Lew. I was… I think I was dreaming about you." She tried
to smile, failed. "You were on a white horse and your armor
shone like the sun."

He smiled both at the
image and to encourage her. "This is Florida, honey. I think its
much too hot for armor. But it's me. I'm here now."

She squeezed his
hand, "I know it's you, Uncle Lew."

"Rachel, honey,
let me get Mom. She's so worried about you. I know she'd want to talk
to you."

"But I don't
want to talk to her." Those eyes stared up at him.

"The doctor,
then. Honey, you've been asleep for some time. I've got to tell them
you're awake."

"Please, Uncle
Lew. I can't bear to be poked and prodded. In a minute you can call
them. But now just stay here with me."

It was wrong and he
knew it. Dr. Marsh should be notified at the very least. But he
seemed helpless before her or, more accurately, his feelings. He was
bound to adore her, he had known that. His only niece, he would
accept her unconditionally, and, to be brutally honest, her intense
desire to be with him mirrored his own fondest wish. He could not
find it in himself to deny her. Besides, the detective inside him
fervently wished for answers.

"Rachie, what
happened to you?"

"All these
tubes," she whispered.

"You're in a
hospital. You took some bad shit, is all."

Her expression was
curious. "You're nothing like Matty. She doesn't have a clue I'm
into drugs."

Her expression
changed abruptly and her mouth began to tremble. He could feel a
vibration coming through her fingers where he gripped them tightly.
Her eyes fluttered closed.

"Rachel—?"
He pressed the spirit-stone down against her breastbone.

When he looked at
her, he met her placid gaze. "I'm okay." The monitors
confirmed her heartbeat and blood pressure were stable. The tip of
her tongue moved over her cracked lips. "Could you get me
something to drink? Like a diet Coke? I'm so thirsty."

"You're getting
fluids through some tubes, honey. I don't think it's a good idea to
give you anything else right now. Maybe later, after the doctor takes
a look at you."

Those ice blue eyes
stared up at him with a naked hunger for knowledge. "What
happened between you and Matty?"

The cop in him could
not resist. "I'll tell you if you'll tell me where you got the
shit that's rotted out your system."

She seemed intrigued.
"I've played this game before."

"What game?"

"I'll show you
mine if you show me yours."

He wondered how
sexually active she was. She was only fifteen, but these days that
was no barrier to having sex. He stifled the desire to ask her; that
was a Matty question, definitely to be avoided.

He smiled down at
her. "Yeah. I've played the game once or twice myself."

"You good at
it?"

What kind of question
was that from a fifteen-year-old, he asked himself.

"I don't know,"
he said. "You'll have to tell me."

"Okay. You go
first."

Keeping her hand in
his, he stood by her bed. "Your mother and I…" He
paused, unsure how to continue. "We're like, I don't know, oil
and water, sometimes. She sees black, I see white, and so we butt
heads over just about everything."

So he told her as
much about her father's nefarious history as he thought she could
digest, how Donald managed to drive a wedge between the family. It
wasn't even half of the story, but he knew it had to be enough to
satisfy her.

"Parents are so
like cats," Rachel said, "you never know what's on their
minds. When Matty deals with me, she's so, I don't know, transparent.
But when it comes to her and my father, God only knows the real
story."

"Maybe the
answer is that parents aren't really as transparent as they seem,"
he said. "They just jump when you press their buttons."

With an adolescent's
disarming way of posing questions that cut to the quick, Rachel said,
"Here's the thing that drives me nuts: did my father leave Matty
or did I drive him away?"

Croaker leaned toward
her. "Honey, what makes you even think that? The breakup had
nothing to do with you."

"In this family
people are always leaving—you, my father. The one constant is
me."

"That's just not
true."

Pain filled her eyes.
"Really? After the divorce my father never came to see me. Why
would he do that unless he blamed me?"

Something in her tone
alerted him. "About you and Matty. What's the problem?"

"It's more like
what isn't the problem."

"Meaning?"

"Because she
wants certain answers, she asks all the wrong questions. She hasn't a
clue what's happening."

"Rachel, what
has happened—to you, I mean?"

She clamped her jaws
shut. The look in her ice blue eyes chilled him to the bone. Croaker
could see that she had an ability to rune people out, even people who
were close to her, who loved her. That was dangerous, maybe even
self-destructive. Could be this dark streak was what had gotten her
into this mess in the first place? he wondered.

"Okay, I told
you what you wanted to know," he said. "Now it's your turn.
Where did you get the bad shit?"

Rachel turned her
head toward the wall.

"Honey—"

Her hand squirmed
free of his.

He'd seen this
attitude before. Who was she protecting? "Rachel, you promised."

"Did not."

"But the game…"

"You don't know
shit about the game." Her voice was so filled with spiteful
venom he was taken aback. "I didn't cut a loogie."

"What the hell
is that?"

"It means spit.
If I don't cut a loogie when I agree to play, I don't have to answer
my part. Every dork knows that."

"Not this dork,"
he said. "Besides, you're in no condition to spit."

That got a reaction.
She either laughed darkly or sobbed. But in any case she kept her
face to the wall.

He began to feel a
kind of desperation, as if something ugly and unknown was slipping
like jelly through his fingers. He had to find a handle, some way to
get through this thorny facade she had suddenly created.

"Rachel, listen,
I'm not the enemy. Just a minute ago I was the only one you wanted to
be with. Now you're shutting me out. What happened?"

For a very long time
there was no sound in the room save the monotonous beeping of the
monitors, the soft, pliant soughing of the machines. "You
wouldn't understand," she whispered at last. "No one does."
And when she rolled her head back toward him he could see that she
was crying. "I'm messed up." She almost choked on her
tears. "I'm so fucking messed up." She stared up at him as
he dabbed her face with the edge of his sleeve. "Uncle Lew, am I
going to die?"

"No, honey."

"Because if I am
I want to know."

He kissed her damp
forehead. "You're not going to die."

"Because if I am
I have to prepare." He kissed her cheeks. "Honey, I told
you—" Her hand sought his, gripping it tightly. "Because
if I am I have to see Gideon."

"Who's Gideon?"

Rachel's ice blue
eyes went wide as she spasmed up off the bed. The monitors were going
blooey and Croaker was howling for the duty nurse.

"Uncle Lew, Oh
God—!"

For one brief
instant, he stared into eyes so filled with terror he felt utterly
and irretrievably lost. Her expression, her emotion, flooded through
him like shards of broken glass.

He clutched her to
him, as if by this act alone he could keep her safe. "Hold on,
Rachie! Hold on!" He picked up the spirit-stone, squeezed placed
it back on her, then took it inside his fist.

Rachel's eyes rolled
up in their sockets and her hand felt like ice. There was no grip
left in it.

He was still howling
when three nurses and the doctor on call hurried in with a crash
cart. One of the nurses had to hold on to Matty, who was trying to
shove her way into the crowded cubicle.

"My girl!"
she screamed. "What's happening to my little girl?"

The doctor, a
dark-skinned Latino, looked up at Croaker and said in a very civil
voice given the circumstances, "Would you mind leaving us to it,
sir?"

"Dr. Marsh,"
Croaker said.

"Already been
paged." The Latino doctor's hands were filled with a vial and a
hypodermic. He barked orders to one of the nurses, then pulled off
the syringe's plastic cap with his teeth. He had no more time for
anything but his patient, and for that Croaker was profoundly
grateful.

Croaker realized he
was still gripping his niece's hand. He stared at the monitors, which
looked like they were giving readings for an extraterrestrial. Then,
he let go, pushed passed doctor and nurses, and, grabbing hold of his
sister, carried her bodily out of the cubicle.

Croaker dragged Matty
to the lavatory and, spinning open the cold water tap, pressed her
head down into the spray. The water wasn't icy—tap water never
was in Florida—but the force of it got her attention. She
stopped screaming and kicking, but he caught a sharp elbow in the
ribs. He grunted and pushed her face farther down into the sink.

He heard her try to
say something and bent down. "What?"

Another jumble of
words and he let up on the pressure enough so her head could turn
sideways.

"I can't
breathe, you bastard," she gasped.

"Now there's a
familiar epithet." He reached up for a roll of paper towels that
stood atop the empty stainless-steel dispenser.

Then he released his
grip on her and she came up coughing and sputtering.

He unrolled the
towels, handed a wad to her. She stood, staring down at it as if she
did not know what it was. Then a moan welled up from her gut and she
began to sob.

"Oh, God, Lew!
Oh, my dear, sweet God!"

He took her in his
arms, holding her tightly, stroking her damp, disheveled hair. He
felt the spasms rack her, felt all the strength go out of her, and he
thought back to the time he'd felt this before, when, wet with
melting sleet and his father's blood, he'd held his mother. Limp with
grief and despair, she had clung to him, her lifeline at the moment
of life's severing. Donald Duke was gone, but Matty still had her
daughter.

Matty began to shiver
and shake uncontrollably. She looked up at him, tears streaming down
her face, clearly terrified.

"Shock,"
Croaker said. "Honey, it's just shock and exhaustion." He
passed a hand over her forehead, smoothing away stray wisps of wet
hair. "I'm going to take you home now."

Her eyes had the
terrified, haunted look of a doe suddenly caught in the beams of a
car's headlights. "But my baby … What about Rachel?"

Her expression told
him clearly that if there was bad news she was in no shape now to
hear it.

He led her to a
toilet, sat her down on it. "Wait here," he said. "I'll
be right back."

Critical Care
Dialysis, always quiet, seemed preternaturally still. Terror gripped
his heart as he hurried past the central nurses's station. He saw
Jenny Marsh with a couple of nurses just outside the drawn privacy
curtain of Rachel's cubicle. She was deep in conversation and he
tried to slow his headlong rush. He paused for a moment at the
briefly deserted nurses' station.

"She's okay, for
now," Dr. Marsh said as he came up. She was scribbling something
on Rachel's chart. "Dr. Cortinez is in with her."

"What the hell
happened?"

"I was hoping
you'd tell me. You were with her when she woke up, I understand."
Her tone held a certain rebuke. She handed the chart to one of the
nurses, nodded to her before turning her full attention on him. "You
should've called a nurse, Mr. Croaker."

"I wanted to,
but Rachel was adamant. She didn't want me to leave her. I'm sorry. I
know it was wrong but I didn't see that I had much choice."

Jenny Marsh appraised
him coolly. "Rachel emerges from a coma—which, given her
condition, I must say defies medical logic. Even so, I doubt very
much whether she could be lucid, let alone adamant."

"That's where
you're wrong, Doctor. She was perfectly lucid. We had a
conversation." He'd made an initial decision not to mention the
spirit-stone, and he knew he had to stand by it. Dr. Marsh's training
would never allow her to accept such an arcane explanation. Croaker
barely knew whether he did; maybe it was just a coincidence. The only
problem with that was he didn't believe in coincidence.

Jenny Marsh looked at
him as if he'd just grown wings. "My initial prognosis still
applies, Mr. Croaker. She needs that kidney. Without it, she won't
make it."

He ran a hand through
his hair. "Okay. I get it. How'd my tests come out?"

"You're not
compatible." She relented and gave him a rueful smile. "I'm
sorry."

Croaker sighed. How
the hell was he going to find Rachel a kidney when there wasn't one
to be had anywhere? He could not help thinking again of the Bonitas
who, according to Bennie, harvested human organs in South America,
and now possibly here, for the select few who could pay their no
doubt exorbitant price. There must be a way. He couldn't give up
hope.

"What can I tell
my sister about Rachel?" he asked.

"As I said, she
appears stable, but I'm afraid she's lapsed back into a coma,"
Dr. Marsh said. "We're doing tests now to try to determine what
happened to her. It'll be a while—the morning at the earliest.
Why don't you take your sister home, Mr. Croaker? There's nothing
either of you can do. And we'll call the moment there's any news."

Dr. Marsh was about
to turn away when he said, "Lew. My name's Lew." His gaze
held hers. "Doctor, about that kidney. There must be a source,
something I don't know about." Could she know about the Bonitas?
Could they really, as Bennie had claimed, be harvesting organs in
this country? "Is there?"

She looked at him.
"I've made calls, tried to pull strings. I've pleaded and
cajoled and, frankly, once or twice, I've made myself look like a
fool. There's nothing more I can do."

But she was not quite
done and he knew it. He felt rather than saw her hesitation, and he
quickly stepped into the breach. "Doctor, if there is another
way, I need to know about it. Please." Like his father, he'd
seen enough rich men, predators, corruptors, and thieves to recognize
when conscience was warring with convention. Not to say that Jenny
Marsh was any of these; it was a truism of the street that matters of
conscience happened more often to people of good character and kind
heart.

Jenny Marsh looked
into his eyes for what seemed a very long time. Then she lifted an
arm in silent invitation and he followed her across the Dialysis
Unit, through a door marked doctor's lounge. It was a medium-size
room filled with cast-off furniture, no doubt donated, and a window
that overlooked the Intracoastal. It was empty.

Jenny Marsh shook her
head. "I must be out of my mind." She jammed her hands into
the pockets of her lab coat. "Look, you have to understand
something. All of us in the organ transplant area are scrupulous—and
I underline that word—about ethics. We will not be
caught alive or dead with an unregistered organ. For us, that it's
illegal to deal in stolen organs is almost beside the point. It's
morally wrong and we'll have none of it."

Like a strange beast
happened upon along a forest path, transforming a peaceful stroll
into a tense encounter, Croaker knew their conversation had taken on
a new and precarious dimension.

"I'm still
listening."

Jenny Marsh drew her
shoulders square, seeming to steel herself. "From time to time,
I've heard that unregistered organs do surface."

Croaker, trained to
elicit confessions from reluctant witnesses and suspects, was adept
at reading between the lines. "Are you telling me you know that
here, in this country, there's an underground commerce in selling
stolen organs?"

She gave an abrupt
nod. "You didn't hear it from me. If you dare tell anyone I
mentioned such a thing I'll deny it." Fear had turned her eyes
muddy. Only a glint of green now and again marked the hazel of her
irises.

He discovered that
his right hand was tightly clutching the back of a sofa. He thought
of Sonia's head sitting in her refrigerator like an offering. What
had Antonio and Heitor done with the organs in her body? This was the
question Bennie and he had asked of each other. Now, abruptly, a
confirmation of their worst suspicions had presented itself as
startlingly as a graven image in a jungle glade. Croaker felt a
tremor roll through him, and again he felt that peculiar
vulnerability, as if his very marrow had been exposed. "Who's
doing the trafficking?"

"We've known for
years the Arabs, the Chinese, and the Pakistanis trade in stolen
organs. They're notorious for it."

"The South
Americans, too, from what I understand. When they disappear
people—dissidents, rebels, political enemies, whoever—they
like to get some monetary gain from it."

Jenny Marsh nodded.
"I've heard that."

"What about
here?"

Jenny shrugged."

He continued to press
her. Could the Bonitas have moved their organ harvesting here to the
States? "Does that mean you don't know or you won't say?"

Jenny looked around
them, as if she was afraid she'd be overheard. Then she beckoned him
to follow her. There went out of the lab, past the Dialysis Unit and
down a short corridor ending in door which read: caution: operating
theater. There, she led him into a small operating room. She switched
on the lights. Against one wall was a stainless-steel and porcelain
object no larger than a portable writing table with flexible tubes
running from its casing. It was oblong in shape, with legs and
rubber-clad casters. She went over to it. "This is a perfusion
machine." She put her hand on its sleek top. "It's what
keeps a kidney alive long enough for us to perform the transplant."

Croaker examined the
perfusion machine, but nothing about it seemed odd or unusual. It
looked like another bit of surgical apparatus, mysterious and,
therefore, vaguely menacing.

"Let me give you
a hypothetical situation," she said. "There's an accident
on I-Ninety-five. Multiple deaths. These days, things are so backed
up these bodies aren't even carted off to the hospital. The M.E.
takes them until they're identified, then they go to a mortuary."
She plucked some stray hairs back behind her ears. "Now say, in
this hypothetical scenario, this M.E.'s unscrupulous. He's in debt or
just wants to make a little more money. Whatever, he's in business
for himself. He ices the abdominal cavities of the corpses to
thirty-two degrees centigrade until he can get the body onto the
perfusion machine. Then he floods it with Belzer solution. Remember,
with a kidney he's got seventy-two hours. Anyway, probably he's
already got buyers lined up. He does his antigen typing. That
typically takes six to eight hours. Bingo! He matches the kidney to
his list and sells it. No one knows because accident victims are
typically in such bad shape a surgical incision by the M.E. will go
unnoticed by the mortician."

He cocked his head.
"Is this scenario hypothetical or typical?"

She looked at him
unhappily. "It's been known to happen."

"Okay. But then
what? Whoever buys the kidney isn't coming to you or someone like you
to sew it in."

"No." Jenny
used long, slender fingers to smooth the front of her lab coat. "But
no doubt there are others who would."

"With your
specific knowledge?"

Her expression was
bleak. "You'd be surprised at how easy it is to do a kidney
transplant. Any private clinic has the facilities—even one
doing out-patient procedures. And, bare bones, all you really need
are three competent professionals: a surgeon, an anesthesiologist,
and an OR tech."

Croaker searched her
face. "So you're saying, what?, this happens?"

"Form your own
conclusions," Jenny said softly. ."Why have you told me
about this?" Croaker asked. "Even if I were able to procure
a kidney you wouldn't put it in Rachel—even to save her life."

Jenny Marsh put a
hand to her temple. "I don't know. I told you I must be out of
my mind." She turned away to stare blankly at the operating
table, empty now, gleaming in the overhead lights. "Maybe it's
that… you're a cop. Cops are like priests in a way. Sometime
it feels good to confess to them."

"But you haven't
done anything wrong."

She turned back to
him, the green of her eyes piercing. "No, but in Rachel's case I
seem to be thinking about it."

"And that scares
you."

"More than you
could know."

"Meet me
tomorrow night for dinner," he said. He had to know more about
this Stateside organ harvesting. Perhaps it might provide a lead to
Antonio and Heitor. And besides, wasn't she offering a slender ray of
hope, glimmering fitfully in the darkness? If she knew someone who
could get a healthy kidney—registered or not—for Rachel…
Harvesting an organ from an accident victim was nothing like what
Antonio and Heitor were doing. But still. The thought that he might
have to make such a decision scared him as much as it obviously did
her, "Right now I've got to get my sister home, but we'll talk
more about it then."

"I'm busy."

"No, you're
not," he said. "I stole a look at your schedule when I went
by the duty station. You're off at ten."

"Maybe not, but
there's no harm in having dinner with me." He smiled. "Call
it a thank-you on Rachie's behalf. You've gone above and beyond for
her, and she—we're all grateful."

"Even if I
wanted to…" She shook her head. "I make it a policy
not to socialize with the family of my patients."

"That's
sensible, I know." He gave her an ironic look. "But there
are times when it's best to throw caution to the wind."

"And you think
this is one of those times, Mr. Croaker?"

"Lew," he
corrected her. "Yes, I do. How many cases like Rachel's have you
had, doctor?"

"None."

She hadn't hesitated;
he thought that was a good sign.

"Well, then,
let's go to hell with ourselves and break all the rules."

Jenny Marsh studied
him for a long moment, then nodded reluctantly.

"That's great,"
he said. "I'll pick you up here."

Again, she gave him
that rueful smile. "Why do I think I'm going to live to regret
this?"

"Because you're
a woman who plays by the rules."

"Isn't it nice,"
she said, her smile broadening just a bit, "to have all the
answers?"

4

Matty lived in the
Palm Beach apartment that Donald Duke had bought five years ago and
became hers as part of the divorce settlement. It was on the twelfth
floor of Harbour Pointe, one of those glitzy high-rises that dotted
South Florida's Gold Coast. It was a place that boasted views of both
the Atlantic Ocean and the Intra- coastal and, in best South Florida
tradition, pointlessly added letters to its name. It was within
walking distance of the Breakers Hotel and the high-profile
restaurants of Royal Poinciana Way, and was coveted by anyone who
wore diamonds at the beach. Besides awesome views,
three-thousand-foot-plus floor plans, lavish marble and gold-plate
baths, and a state-of-the-art rooftop cardiovascular fitness center,
Harbour Pointe also boasted both a doorman and a concierge.

The lobby was typical
of places that used the word residences for apartments that
began at one million dollars. With its four massive crystal
chandeliers, its custom Missoni carpets, and its pink suede and
brushed bronze furniture, flamboyant was a woefully inadequate
adjective to describe it.

Up on the twelfth
floor, he turned on all the lights in the apartment, as if banishing
the dark could dispel Matty's sudden and crushing depression. To his
report of Rachel's stable condition she had said not a word during
the short drive over the Flagler Memorial Bridge, down Royal
Poinciana Way to Palm Beach proper.

He put her on one of
the two facing oversize sofas in the living room. The entire place
was furnished grandly in a decorator's idea of the European style:
period furniture, upholstered in sweeps of pale moire fabric and
French provincial patterns, antique Oriental carpets in Iranian reds
and blues muted by time and sunlight. This was all set off by
eclectic accent pieces: statuary, paintings of the French
countryside, mincing side tables, swags on lush curtains, massive
cut-glass bowls, and ornamental knickknacks in profusion. The walls
were partially paneled with the ubiquitous Floridian mirrors, which
reflected the two bodies of water in dizzying and unexpected angles.

All this highly
conspicuous artifice provided a brittle surface of culture. That
hardly surprised him, given what he knew of Donald Duke, but
something else did. In all this wonderland of overpriced junk,
Croaker discovered no photographs, no personal possessions or
mementos of the last fifteen years, no sense of individuality. Where
was Matty amid this anonymous chic and glitter?

Matty sat with her
bare feet on the carpet, looking undone by terror at the center of
this perfect, hollow splendor. She was like a projectile in transit:
in a limbo defined not by stasis but by velocity.

"When was the
last time you ate?" She made him prompt her out of silence.
"Matty…?"

"I don't
remember."

He headed for the
kitchen. "I'll fix you something."

"You'll have to
be some kind of magician," she called after him. "I haven't
shopped in a week."

She wasn't kidding.
In the comparatively small kitchen he discovered a refrigerator with
nothing in it but three white paper containers from Chinese takeout,
half a carton of spoiled skim milk, an empty box of shredded wheat, a
head of garlic, half a head of spoiled iceberg lettuce, some
semiwilted scallions, and a jar of Reese's peanut butter. The freezer
held foil-wrapped packages of cake, a bag of gourmet coffee beans,
and two unopened pints of Haagen-Dazs ice cream.

"Jesus," he
muttered, peering into the containers of Chinese takeout. One held
rice hard as ice, the second a shrimp dish whose ammoniac smell made
him wince. The third had once contained an order of ginger beef. All
that remained, however, were long slivers of ginger embedded like
wooden splinters in a congealed brown sauce.

He rummaged through
the cupboards, found pasta and a third of a bottle of Scotch. All in
all, with the plastic packet of soy sauce from the takeout, it was
enough. He dug out a large pot, filled it halfway with water, and set
it to boil. In a bowl with some warm water he spooned out the peanut
butter, thinned it to the proper consistency. Then he chopped up the
garlic and scallions, added the slivers of ginger and the soy sauce,
then the garlic, and got that mixture going in a saucepan. He slopped
in a generous dollop of Scotch. By that time the water was boiling in
the pot. He measured out the pasta and dumped it in.

When, fifteen minutes
later, he called Matty to the table, her eyes got big as saucers.
"What the hell is that?" she asked, pointing to the pasta
in a pale brown sauce.

"Sit down and
eat," he ordered, sprinkling the scallions over the top.

Matty sighed, ran her
hands through her hair, and sank into a chair. By this time, she had
scrubbed her runny makeup off her face and he could see all over
again the beautiful young girl he remembered. Once she started to
eat, she couldn't stop. After her fifth or sixth forkful, she looked
up. "You are some kind of magician. This is fantastic!"

"Thanks."
He sat down opposite her, took a small portion onto his plate. It was
mainly for show; the steak he'd eaten at Bennie's was sitting on his
stomach like a leprechaun digging for a potful of gold.

Matty wiped her lips.
"Where'd you learn to cook like this?"

"In Japan,"
Croaker said. "Actually, it was something of a neces- sity. I
hate raw fish, so wherever I was I ferreted out the best Chinese
restaurant. And let me tell you there are some great ones there."
He spiraled some pasta on the tines of his fork. "Somehow I
always managed to get friendly with the chef." He laughed,
remembering. "It wasn't so surprising." He extruded the
nails from his biomechanical hand. "Once I gave 'em a
demonstration of my own brand of slicing and dicing food, they were
always asking me back into their kitchens. You should have seen 'em
crowd around."

Matty shook her head
as she helped herself to more pasta. "You really are full of
surprises."

"So are you."
He looked at her pointedly, and when her gaze met his, he said,
"Matty, d'you think you can tell me why Rachie thinks she drove
Donald away?"

She frowned. "She
said that?"

"Uh-huh. She
also said that her father didn't come to see her after the breakup."

"That part's
true enough." She put her fork down, frowned. "Let me tell
you, we had some screaming fights on the phone about that."

"Not in person?"

She shook her head.
"Donald was adamant about that. He'd cut the ties and as far as
he was concerned that was that. For him the divorce was like an
operation; he couldn't understand why anyone would want to go back
and revisit their gallbladder."

"But Rachel was
his daughter—"

She raised her
eyebrows. "In his eyes, Rachel was mine; she was part of the
life he once had and had gotten bored with."

"You say that so
calmly."

She pushed her plate
away; she'd had enough of her food. "Donald was a driven man. He
had furies in his head. He was always restless, always tearing down
and building, never satisfied with what he'd created. I understood
him. That was something you never bothered to do."

Matty sighed, raked
scarlet nails through her thick hair. "I can see where this will
lead and I have no desire to go down that road again." She put a
hand over his. "Not when we've found each other again." She
smiled at him. "But, truly, Lew, there was a side to him you
never quite got. You were too busy hating his guts."

"He gave me good
reason."

Her eyes turned hard
for just an instant, and Croaker clenched his biomechanical hand
beneath the table. "The truth now, Matty.

The whole truth and
nothing but. At Rachie's christening I was so happy for you, despite
how you'd treated us. Then Donald came up to me and put his arm
around me. I swear he almost kissed me on the cheek."

"I remember
that."

"But you don't
know the rest," Croaker said. "He told me how great it was
to have a cop as part of the family, what great buddies we were going
to be—how we'd do things together, you know, guy to guy. Like
flying out on his private jet to go hunting and fishing. 'The whole
country is our preserve,' he told me. 'And when we go, I want you to
feel free to bring your cop pals. You know, the big shots from
downtown, the high-steppers from City Hall.' He hugged me to him. 'My
marrying your sister is the best thing that ever happened to you,' he
said. Trust me. Together, we'll make more money than you've ever
dreamed of. If you get your buddies to play along.'"

"What do you
mean?"

He saw the dismayed
look in her eyes and he held on to her hand. "Before I go on…
This is the last of him, Matty. He's spent too many years standing
between us. I won't allow that to happen anymore. It's all in the
past. Agreed?"

She nodded. "Yes,
Lew," she said breathlessly. "As far as I'm concerned,
Donald's history. But I want the true history now."

"All right.
Donald wanted to be hooked into all the right people in New York.
That meant politicians, cops, and union leaders. He wanted me to make
the introductions, twist arms here and there if need be. All so he
could make his dirty deals." He leaned forward over the table.
"Honey, that's when I blew up and threatened him."

"You never told
me," she whispered.

"Because I was
so stone cold angry," he said. "But also maybe you weren't
ready to hear it."

Croaker's heart broke
at the look of desolation on his sister's face. Now she knew that
there was more to Donald than she had known. The funny thing was,
he'd dreamed of this moment, of setting her free from her
self-induced fantasy about Donald. But now that it had happened, he
tasted only ashes in his mouth. "Jesus, I fucked up my life."

"No, honey. You
fell in love."

She laughed harshly.
"Is that what it's called these days?" She shook her head,
but she continued to grasp his hand as if it were a lifeline. "I
was smart, beautiful—and vulnerable. And Donald saw it all in a
flash, spread out in front of him like a four-course feast."

She tried to smile.
"This is the way it was, Lew. All his friends—no, strike
that—all his associates—young millionaires and
clever entrepreneurs—had married for status. They moved in on
women of certain pedigree whose families' status would ensure them
entree to circles beyond even their money. Okay, but Donald was
different. Maybe that was too easy a game for him. He wanted
something more. To tear down and build something almost from scratch
like he did in business. He wanted to play Henry Higgins to my Eliza
Doolittle. He wanted to create a lady of culture and
breeding out of this waif from Hell's Kitchen."

She waved a hand.
"Oh, he made no bones about it. For my part, I was thrilled. Who
in my position wouldn't be? The attention and grooming he lavished on
me was my dream come true. Tutors in diction, manners, foreign
languages—my God, he even hired a famous coach of the Met's
opera divas! I had private lessons in ballet, tennis, horsemanship,
polo, exercise, sailing. When he judged me ready, I came out. We went
on fox hunts in England, played polo in Argentina, crewed in Newport.
It bunded me to everything else."

She held on to her
elbows as a drowning woman will clutch onto a spar. "This is my
Walpurgisnacht." Her gaze struck Croaker's face with full force
"Donald's dead now, my daughter's on the point of death, and
everything I admired in him is turned to dust. At last, the truth is
staring me in the face like a death's head. And if I can't face up to
what he was now, I never will."

Matty reached out and
placed the palm of her hand on the crown of his head as if in
benediction. Then she ruffled his hair, as she used to do when they
were young.

"It's okay."
Her voice, with the depth and timbre of a coloratura, filled the
room. "At last I understand just how angry we've been with each
other."

She rose and took his
chin and turned his face so that she stared into his eyes. Then she
kissed both his cheeks. "But now everything's been said and
we'll forget about it, because we've found each other. After all this
time."

Then she busied
herself with clearing the table and washing the dishes. She did it
all with clean, economical movements, and by her straight-ahead
efficiency, he knew that she had adjusted to being alone, if not to
the tragedy that had befallen Rachel.

When she heard him
come into the kitchen, she turned and he slid his arms around her,
holding her close. He could hear her heart beating fast and he ached
for her, and for himself. At last, they broke away, and returning to
her washing, she said, "Lew, what else did Rachel say to you
when she was awake?"

"Your daughter
is angry."

Matty, her hands
encased in yellow rubber gloves, nodded sadly as she rinsed off a
plate. "Aren't ninety-nine percent of the teenagers in the
world?" She said it as if she needed to convince herself.
Rinsing off a plate, she gave him an anxious glance over her
shoulder. "What's the matter? You too old to remember what it's
like?"

"Despite what
you see on TV, they aren't all taking drugs," he said. "Also,
they're not all hiding a secret like Rachel is."

Matty whirled around,
her face suddenly pinched with new concern. "What kind of a
secret?"

He took a plate out
of the drain board and began to dry it. "Have you noticed a
difference in Rachel over the past, say, three or four months?"

She shook her head.
"Not really. She's been uncommunicative, reclusive since Donald
died. When he was killed six months ago something seemed to snap
inside Rachel. I don't know what it was, except maybe then her hope
that he would one day welcome her back into his life was shattered."

"Have you talked
with her about it?"

"Many times. But
I don't get anything about her world. Try as I might, I can't
understand Green Day or any of these other rock bands that spew out
noise. It all sounds like a hissy fit to me." She put another
plate on the drain board and began scrubbing a pot. "And to be
brutally honest, Rachie would rather I don't get it. Any
attempt at contact with her world she takes as an intrusion."

"Matty, the
amount of drugs she's been doing—something's seriously wrong.
Can you remember anything at all?"

"As you can
imagine, the breakup didn't help." Then she shrugged. "There's
nothing else, really. I mean, six months ago she went to Dr. Stansky
for her annual school physical and everything was okay." She
frowned. "I'll tell you one thing, Stansky didn't say anything
to me about her taking drugs."

"Absolutely not.
She gets straight As in school. As to the rest, I brought Rachel up
with better values than that."

"Drugs can
change people, Matty." He waited for her to respond.

When she didn't, he
said, "I'd like to take a look at Rachel's room. Is that okay?"

Instead of answering,
she said, "I wish I'd had a chance to talk to her."

"Do you know
someone named Gideon?"

She turned around. "A
boyfriend is my guess. I know she saw someone named Gideon. I never
met him, though. She wouldn't talk about him."

"You let her see
him without knowing anything about him?"

"Lew, Rachel is
fifteen going on twenty-two." When she saw the look on his face,
she said, "What would you have me do, put a leash on her? I
can't ground her every night of the year. She seems to hate me enough
as it is. These days, she says it often enough."

"And her father?
How did she feel about him?"

Matty sighed. "There
isn't a bigger mystery in my life. I've told you that Donald never
seemed to care much about her. Of course Rachel was aware of it, but
it never seemed to faze her. When he was away she used to hang on
every call he made, waiting to talk to him. And even though he'd
disappoint her every time, her hope seemed undiminished. Just the
opposite, in fact. Oh, how that used to infuriate me!" Her voice
rose harshly as she continued to amass a pile of clean pots and
plates.

He had been tuning
into her wavelength for some time, and he was struck by this
discordant note. "Matty, what is it?"

"Nothing."

"You've come
this far," he said gently. "Take the next step."

She shook her head.
"Don't read into anything." She shrugged. "It's just
that, you know…" He could see her take a deep breath.
"Well, sometimes it seemed to me that Rachel and Donald…
that this thing between them was some kind of sick game." She
gave off an embarrassed laugh that was almost a sob. "Stupid of
me."

"No, it's not,"
Croaker said. "Tell me what you mean."

Matty washed dishes
as she did everything else, with a meticulous attention to detail. No
wonder Donald's Henry Higgins routine worked so well with her. As she
had proved in school and again at the ad agency she had unlimited
aptitude. "It's just that this approach-avoidance thing with
them while Rachel was growing up…"

"Before the
divorce, you mean?"

Matty nodded. "Yes.
There was something about it, an edge. Sometimes it seemed to me they
fed off it, that it was their way of dealing with each other. Rachel
would approach him, Donald would fend her off, and it would escalate
like that until they were both at some kind of fever pitch."

"And then what
would happen?"

"I don't know."
Matty's eyes were bleak at the remembrance. "Like a bubble it
would suddenly burst. One moment it would be there and the next…
their emotions were back to normal."

"Did he finally
consent to see her? Was that how the tension resolved itself?"

"Sometimes, yes;
at others, I don't think so. At least, I wasn't aware of them being
together." It was clear Matty was struggling with this mystery.
"In either case, Donald was back to his routine and Rachel would
be sunny and somehow calm. Until the cycle started all over again."

Croaker said gently,
"Matty, I have to ask this. Was Donald in any way abusive to
Rachel?"

"Absolutely
not." Her eyes were clear and he could see no reason to doubt
her. "You know me better than that, Lew. I never would have
allowed it. But the issue never arose; Donald was not that kind of
man. He was too confident in himself and in everything he did. He
knew so many subtle ways to exert his power he'd never even consider
the physical one."

For a time, she
seemed lost in thought. She was through washing. Pulling off her
gloves, she put a hand gently on his arm. Her eyes glittered with
tears. "Go see her den of iniquity."

He went down the
hall, his footsteps muffled by the thick carpet. At the far end of
the hall, he took a step into Rachel's room. It looked like a typical
teenager's bedroom. It was painted clear white with trim black as
funeral bunting. There were posters on the wall of Kurt Cobain, the
late lead singer of Nirvana, along with posters of other rock bands:
Stone Temple Pilots, Live, and REM.

The bedspread was
black-and-white in a pattern that reminded Croaker of those old
dinettes from the 1950s. He sat on the bed and looked around. He
wanted to get a sense of the room from Rachel's point of view. When
she got up each morning, this is what she saw. It had been his
experience that people liked to wake up looking at their favorite
possessions. He saw Kurt Cobain on the wall; he saw the window with
the lights of Palm Beach strung like jewels around a dowager's crepey
neck; he saw a photograph on her dresser. Inside the black wood frame
was a black-and-white shot of a striking young woman with dark,
chin-length hair. She was dressed in a see-through vinyl raincoat and
was clutching a white, long-haired cat to her chest. Beneath the
vinyl raincoat, the woman wore a thick black belt covered in metal
studs. Croaker got up and went over to it. The photo was not
personal, but a page cut out of a magazine. The young woman was a
model. He turned the frame around and opened it, but the back of the
page held nothing more informative than part of an ad for Buffalo
jeans. The name of the magazine or the date did not appear.

He replaced the photo
in its frame, took up another, smaller photo that had been hidden
behind the first one. This one was of Rachel. She had on an
aquamarine satin dress with a sweetheart neckline. She was made up
and there was a string of pearls—perhaps a loan from
Matty—around her neck. She looked beautiful and very grown up.
About to go to a prom, Croaker guessed. The only thing was she didn't
seem at all happy. He slid out the photo of her his sister had given
him and compared the two shots. In his, Rachel had been caught in an
unguarded moment. In this other, posed shot, her intensity dominated
to the point where she appeared brooding, almost sullen.

He put down the prom
photo, but as he looked at it, something bothered him. It had moved
slightly and there seemed to be something behind it. He slid if out
of its frame, and to his utter surprise found a picture of himself.
For a moment he could not remember when or where it had been taken.
Then the memory came flooding back. It had been at their cousin's
wedding in Forest Hills. But hadn't this photo originally been of him
and Matty? He held the photo up to the lamplight, saw that the left
side had been carefully cut away. Looking this closely, he recognized
part of his sister's arm and hip.

After he returned the
photos he went methodically through Rachel's drawers, checking in
corners, through piles of black T-shirts and cotton blouses,
underpants, and bras. He was looking for two things: any sign of
drugs and her diary. Girls her age almost always wrote in diaries.
Diaries were for secrets, and he suspected his niece had more than
her share of those. Like who was Gideon? Someone she saw at night.
Matty thought a boyfriend; to that Croaker would add drug connection.
He found nothing except a large sachet of lilac potpourri in the
bottom drawer.

Her walk-in closet
was more empty than full. There were some clothes—mostly all
black, three pairs of jeans, a couple of pairs of thick-soled Dr.
Marten's boots, the ones that laced high up like U.S. Army combat
boots, one pair of black-and-white retro-looking Airwalk sneakers. A
cluster of black belts larded with metal studs of different shapes
and sizes hung from a wire hanger. He thought of the photo of the
model in her see-through vinyl raincoat and black studded belt. In a
corner he found a black leather jacket.

Across the back
someone had handwritten the word manman in white permanent paint.

Directly below,
heaped on the floor, was the aquamarine satin prom dress. He
stooped, picking up the dress to hang it, when he saw something lying
on the floor. He couldn't have seen it before because the dress had
covered it. He used his stainless-steel nail to bring it out into the
light.

It was a red rubber
ball with silk cords attached to either side. Croaker had seen such
items before. This was a ball gag, part of the ominous, ritualistic
paraphernalia used by people into S-M. The ball went into the mouth,
the cords tied at the back of the head to hold it in place. For a
long time, he crouched there, staring. A vein pulsed in one temple as
he contemplated the growing enigma that was Rachel. When it came to
sex his attitude had always been live and let live, but this
discovery shook him. This was his niece, not some hooker on the
Tamiami Trail.

Into his mind came
Matty's face, her confusion painful to witness. She had been talking
of Rachel's relationship with her father. To Croaker, there was more
than a hint of S-M to it, even if it was only expressed on an
emotional level. Matty was smart enough to suspect this. But what if,
in Rachel, it was more? What if her sexual relationship with Gideon
involved a true acting out of these perverse emotions?

At length, he reached
out, put the ball gag into his pocket. He had no intention of letting
his sister find it. She'd had more than enough shocks for the time
being. Before he did anything else, he carefully hung up the prom
dress, smoothing the bodice. It seemed important to get rid of all
the wrinkles, as if by this act alone he could restore his image of
Rachel to what it had been before he'd found the red rubber ball
fraught with so many dark implications.

He went methodically
through the pockets of the leather jacket. He discovered half a roll
of Life Savers, a couple of wadded-up tissues, thirteen cents in
change, a small ball of aluminum foil. It was tightly packed. He
extruded a stainless-steel nail and opened it carefully with the
razor sharp tip. There was nothing inside except a whitish residue.
He put this up to his nose, then licked it tentatively. Could be
coke, he thought, but there was too little to be sure.

He was putting back
the Life Savers in the left-hand pocket when something fell against
the back of his knuckles. He felt around but couldn't get to it.
Curious, he took the jacket off its hanger and turned it inside out.
He checked the seams. They were solidly stitched except for a
four-inch length on the left side, which had been hastily basted. He
snagged the loose thread and, with a sudden sense of foreboding,
pulled. Then he stuck his fingers inside.

He extracted an ounce
plastic bag filled with white powder. Opening it, he gave it a taste
on the tip of his tongue.

He cursed mightily
under his breath. The taste was unmistakable. It was cocaine.

Matty was working
steadily in the kitchen. She'd brewed coffee and she was slicing a
slab of what looked like a rich Russian coffee cake she'd taken from
the freezer. "Emergency rations," she said when he came in.
"If this isn't an emergency I don't know what is."

She gave him a
tentative smile as she popped the pastry into the microwave, turned
it on. "Find anything interesting?"

"There's
something about Gideon and Rachel," he said softly.

Fear harrowed Matty's
face as he took out the one-ounce bag of coke.

She put her hand to
her mouth. "Oh, Christ. Is it…?"

He nodded "Cocaine.
I found it in Rachel's closet."

Croaker watched her
beautiful, haunted eyes. The microwave beeped and automatically she
opened the door. The kitchen smelled of cinnamon and walnuts and
coffee. She stood staring blankly into the interior. At last, she
said, "What in God's name is she doing to herself, Lew?"

"I don't know."
He watched as she slid the coffee cake onto plates then, licking her
fingertips, poured coffee into pale green mugs. But her frayed nerves
betrayed her at last and she spilled some before Croaker, coming
quickly up behind her, steadied her hand.

"Oh, Christ. Oh,
Jesus." She leaned back against his solid strength, rocking a
little. "My daughter and I haven't had much of a relationship.
The sad truth is I don't know who she is."

Croaker held her
tenderly while she gathered herself.

"I'll take the
food in," he said.

But she shook her
head and slowly disengaged herself. "No, I need to do this. I
can do this."

She carefully
finished pouring the coffee and Croaker could see that her hands no
longer shook. Then she put their plates and mugs on the tray, and led
him into the dining room. She sat down, swept her hair back from the
side of her face, sighing. "My God, I feel as if I married a
stranger."

He took a bite of the
coffee cake. "Not so long ago I was involved with a woman—a
married woman." When Matty raised her eyebrows, he added: "An
unhappily married woman, but that didn't make it right."
He took another bite of the pastry, washed it down with the rich
coffee. "Anyway," he went on, "this woman had a
daughter. She was a beautiful girl, and smart. But she was sick.
Bulimic. She got sick because of her parents. They had a terrible,
almost adversarial relationship and the girl was aware of it all."

Matty, who had been
stirring cream into her coffee, paused. "You see a parallel?"

"This girl felt
she was unloved."

He could see his
sister stiffen. Color flushed to her cheeks and she began to tremble.
"I love my daughter," she whispered.

"I know you do.
I said the girl felt she was unloved. That's not the same as
her being unloved. In fact, her mother loved her
desperately."

"I love Rachel
desperately." She looked at him imploringly. "Besides you,
she's the only important thing in my life, Lew. But now I think, What
if I've come to that realization too late?"

"Tell me
something, where was Rachel when you and Donald were riding to hounds
in England, playing polo in Argentina, and crewing in Newport?"
He waited a moment. "She needed you then; she must have. Girls
need their mommies."

Matty used a nail to
slowly and methodically extract the walnuts from the cake. She did
this until she had made a hole clear through the pastry. At last, she
said, "In those days, I tried to be there for her. But Donald
was so insistent. He needed me, too. He'd given me so much, opened up
so many doors for me. So I went with him and left Rachel with the
nanny." Matty gripped her mug with both hands, as if trying to
warm herself beside a fire. Her knuckles were white and her eyes
seemed bleak and lifeless. At last, she said, "What's happened
to our lives—what's happened to her when I wasn't
looking?" She was shaking in terror. "Do you think that
when Rachel says she hates me she really means it?"

"What I think
doesn't matter; I'm only a newcomer here," he said. "What
do you think?"

"Lew, she's
taking drugs, she's seeing people I know nothing about. At night, she
goes… I don't know where she goes. And when she woke up it was
you she wanted to talk to, not me." Her face was stricken. "And
now all I want is to make it up to her. I want to hold her close and
tell her how much I love her, but what if it's too late."

She trailed off and
Croaker squeezed her hand in his. He wanted to tell her that it
wasn't too late, but the words felt hollow in his mind. In a week,
maybe two, Rachel could be dead. "Don't give up hope. I'm using
all my resources to try and find her a kidney."

She bit her lip. "My
God, Lew, do you think you can? It would be a miracle."

"Hold on, Matty.
Just hold on."

Tears rolled silently
down his sister's cheeks, dropping one by one on the tabletop. When
she could trust herself to speak, she said, "Donald gave me
everything I ever wanted. In return for making me into a fairytale
princess, I did everything to please him, which was maybe the
problem. Somewhere along the way I got lost."

"No, honey,"
he said, "you were already lost when you met him."

Croaker, staring at
the photo of the model in the clear vinyl raincoat, fell asleep on
Rachel's bed. Afterward, Matty tiptoed in and covered him with a
light cotton blanket. Before she tucked the left side all the way
around him she took a long look at his biomechanical hand. She didn't
have to wonder what it must be like to be so seriously maimed. The
first two months after Donald walked out on her she'd felt as if her
legs had been amputated. Dead though the marriage might be, it had
become her life-support system. Without it she was certain she was
going to die. That she hadn't had come as a minor revelation to her.

As she covered her
brother with the blanket she realized that she had never asked him
the details of what had happened to his left hand. Typical, she
thought. It was not her way to confide or ask confidences. Any form
of intimacy other than the strictly physical kind was painful for
her. It had been this way for so many years that it had become the
norm. But she saw now what a terrible failing that was. It probably
had been with Donald; it certainly had been with Rachel.

Matty wished with all
her heart that she had been able to fully embrace Rachel after the
breakup, to take her daughter into her confidence so that neither of
them would have had to feel so alone. But she just couldn't. So many
terrible emotions…

In misery, she
realized now she'd suspected for some time that Rachel was having a
hard time. She just couldn't admit it to herself. But now the full
extent of her daughter's emotional pain hit her with the force of a
freight train. For a moment, she doubled over just as if all the wind
had been taken out of her. Her legs gave way and she found herself
kneeling on the floor of Rachel's room. The carpet felt rough against
her burning cheek and with each shuddering breath she took she drank
in the smell of her daughter as if it were lifeblood that could
sustain her.

What else could she
do except pray? Dear God, she whispered. Don't take my
baby away before I have a chance to get to know her.

DAY
THREE

1

Croaker arose before
dawn. He had a kind of internal alarm clock that never failed him. He
showered, dressed in his same clothes, and slipped out the front door
all without waking Matty. It would be hours before she got up—God
knew she needed her sleep—and by then she could make her own
way to the hospital.

Outside, glimmers of
security lights skittered like fugitive spirits along the sidewalk.
He listened for the crash of the surf, heard hungry gulls calling
instead, and the peaceful lapping of the Intracoastal.

He decided to walk to
the hospital, not more than fifteen minutes on foot. By the time he
got there, daylight would have broken, and he wouldn't have to bother
returning Matty's Lexus. His T-bird was still 'in the hospital
parking lot—hopefully. If it hadn't been stolen or vandalized.

On the way, he
stopped at a rank of newspaper vending machines, got a copy of the
Sun-Sentinel It was the Broward County daily and would list
all the current events scheduled for the area. He riffled through
local news, looking for the right section.

It hadn't been
happenstance that he had fallen asleep in his niece's bedroom. He'd
wanted to breathe her in, to give his unconscious time to work on the
significance of what he had seen. Some things in Rachel's room just
hadn't added up to the mental picture he was forming of her.
Out-of-place elements usually meant one thing: the picture you'd
formed was in some way false.

I once went out
to fish, Stone Tree had told him. I was hungry, and the
hunger drove me outside into the rain. But the moment I put my hands
on the boat I knew. If I went out in it, I would not return. So I
went back inside and screwed my door and windows shut. Within the
hour, the wind was so high it drove sand through the cracks in
my house boards. So now I remember: if a thought doesn't feel
right, put it aside.

Croaker had fallen
asleep with the image of the model in his head, but that image didn't
feel right. He had awakened seeing in his mind the strange word
handpainted on the back of the black leather jacket—the coke
jacket. Thoughts, images, or impressions he had just before going to
sleep or as he was waking up were often the purest and, therefore,
truest, even if at first they made no sense. Eventually, when enough
other pieces fell into place, they always did. They always led him to
the truth.

manman was what the
jacket back had said. What in the world was Manman? He hadn't had a
clue last night, didn't even know whether it was significant. But
this morning intuition had quickly bloomed into a suspicion. He'd got
up and stared from one poster of a rock group to another.

He was more or less
in the middle of the Flagler Bridge when he found the club listings
in the Sun-Sentinel On the surface, it seemed like a very
long shot that he'd find it here, but he kept scanning the listings
and the ads, thinking of the leather jacket and when Rachel would
wear it. On rainy days, maybe, though leather was not waterproof. The
handful of really cool days in the winter? Okay. When else? At night,
when she went out to clubs.

And here he was
looking for clubs with live music because—

Almost all the way
across the bridge, he stopped. Calmly, he folded back the page,
folded it again until the small, square ad in the center was made
more prominent. Somewhere not far distant a motorboat engine began to
gurgle, curdling the placid water of the Intracoastal. The sweetish
tang of marine diesel came to him briefly, before being borne aloft
by the morning breeze. Salmon-colored light tinged the lateral cloud
bank just above the eastern horizon. Soon, the parade of fishing
boats and pleasure yachts would lift anchor, coming through here on
their way to the Atlantic. He smelled the ocean, heard the gulls and
frigate birds calling, but only distantly, as if they were part of
another world.

At a club called the
Lightning Tube on Washington Avenue in South Beach a band named
ManMan was currently playing. He checked the dates and the show
times. As he walked toward the hospital, he imagined Rachel at the
Lightning Tube. She was wearing her manman jacket and she was talking
to one of the members of the band. Maybe a tall, lean guitarist named
Gideon, who covered her hand with his, transferring a one-ounce
packet of coke. It seemed logical; better, it felt right. While he'd
slept in Rachel's room his unconscious had drunk in the scent of her.
In his mind, he could see her as she had been before the renal
failure. He walked at her side, silent as a ghost, but alive as a
spirit. He felt the nettles of her rancorous rebellion, fueled by her
father's rejection and her need to disengage herself from her mother.
It seemed clear to him that Gideon must somehow have a hand in that
rebellion. Tonight, he'd find out.

On the other side of
the Intracoastal, Croaker walked the three blocks north on Olive
Avenue to Eucalyptus Street. A police patrol car passed him, slowing
slightly as the driver checked him out, before driving on. Not
surprisingly, Croaker saw no pedestrians at all. At the end of the
street, he went into the hospital parking lot and checked on the
T-bird. Miraculously, it was untouched. He was just about to enter
the hospital when he heard a car door slam behind him and footfalls
crunching the grit of the parking lot blacktop.

"Mr. Croaker?"

He turned. A tall,
cadaverously thin man was walking toward him. He was neither
sauntering nor hurrying, nevertheless there was a quality about him
that gave Croaker pause.

He was dressed in a
stylish cafe-au-lait tropical-weight suit. His hair, slicked back off
his wide, gleaming forehead was the color of freshly oiled gunmetal.
His face was almost all jaw. For the rest, a slash of a mouth, a
knife-thin, knobbed nose, and eyes the color of undiluted coffee set
beneath bony brows sufficed to define him as a man with both
confidence and means. The two did not often go together, as Croaker
had some time ago discovered, and he'd learned to mark men who
possessed them.

The man came up to
him. His skin was the color of polished teak, and his face had a
slightly Latin cast. He was carrying an attaché so sleek and
thin it seemed impractical. He wore black loafers of ostrich skin, a
slim Patek Philippe wristwatch, and a simple gold wedding band on his
left hand. Very elegant.

"You are Lew
Croaker." He smelled faintly of sandalwood and lime.

"And you are?"

The cadaverous man
smiled, showing teeth yellowed by years of tobacco smoke. "Marcellus
Rojas Diego Majeur." A business card was proffered between his
fingers.

Croaker gave it a
quick read. Mr. Marcellus Rojas Diego Majeur was an attorney-at-law.
It figured.

Croaker looked up.
"Mr. Majeur, it's what, a little after six in the morning?"

Majeur crooked his
left arm, glanced at his Patek Philippe. "Seven minutes past the
hour, sir, to be exact."

Croaker frowned, "How
long have you been waiting for me?"

"Since three."
Majeur said it as if sitting in parking lots in the dead of night was
routine.

"You look fresh
as a daisy."

"Thank you."
Majeur gave a little bow. "Mr. Croaker, I wonder if I could have
a few moments of your time."

"Not right now,"
Croaker said. "I've got to get upstairs."

"Yes, I
understand." Majeur nodded sorrowfully and, tongue against the
roof of his mouth, made a clucking sound. All that was missing was
for him to exclaim Oh, dear! like a beloved aged uncle.

"Some other
time, maybe." Croaker nodded. "Give me a call. I'm in the
book."

Another, darker look
appeared on Majeur's face. "I'm afraid another time won't do,
sir. Not at all. It's now or never."

"Then it'll be
never."

Croaker was about to
turn away when he saw the gleam of a small .25 caliber gun in
Majeur's hand. It was pointing at Croaker's stomach.

"No,"
Majeur said with no emotion at all. "It will be now."

Croaker looked from
the muzzle of the almost toylike gun to Majeur's face. "Do you
expect me to believe you'll shoot me here on the steps of the
hospital?"

Majeur shrugged.
"It's been done before." A quick smile cut across his face
like lightning in a nighttime storm. "But not by me." His
dark and enigmatic gaze held Croaker's for some time. "I'm
licensed to be armed, by the way."

"I'm sure you
are, but I very much doubt you'd put yourself in that kind of
jeopardy for any client."

Majeur's bland
expression never wavered. "That would presuppose you knew
something about me. You don't."

Staring into those
coffee-colored eyes, Croaker took a gamble, cobbling together a
thumbnail sketch from quick observation, intuition, and past
experience. "I know what I need to know. You're the kind of man
for whom clients are money. The larger the retainer the more you'll
risk, the equation's as simple as that. If the pay is up to your
standard, you're detached, professional, committed to the end. Tell
me, how wide off the mark am I?"

A wry smile was
creasing Majeur's face. "I can tell you that whoever said money
isn't everything is not living my life." As swiftly as the .25
had appeared, it was gone. "I apologize for alarming you. I am
not by nature a violent man, unless severely provoked. But I needed
to gain your full attention, Mr. Croaker, because the nature of my
errand is urgent. For my client—and for your niece."

Croaker felt a small
shock wave go through him. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't play
games with me, sir, it is an unproductive endeavor." He jerked
his head toward the hospital entrance, "I've been up to visit
her, you see."

"I handed them
my card." Majeur's mouth smiled. "You'd be surprised the
liberties one can exercise as an attorney. I told them I represented
a potential donor, which is, more or less, the truth."

Croaker suddenly felt
chilled, then feverish. "Donor?"

Majeur leaned forward
even as he lowered his voice to a stage whisper. "Kidney
donor, señor. I mean to say, that's what your niece
is in need of, yes?"

The sky was a
pellucid blue. High above, clouds were lit up with sunlight as if
they were neon signs. The early morning air felt hot against
Croaker's skin, and all of a sudden he was acutely aware of where
they were standing. An ambulance was pulling up outside the adjacent
Emergency entrance, and people—mostly doctors and nurses
changing shifts—were drifting in and out.

He looked at Majeur,
who was waiting patient as a buddha. "Is there anywhere we can
go and talk?"

Majeur's eyes seemed
to sparkle in the newly reborn sunlight. "I think my car will
suffice." He lifted an arm to indicate the way.

Marcellus Rojas Diego
Majeur's car turned out to be a pristine 1967 turquoise Mustang. He
smiled as he unlocked it and opened the long door, which was one of
the beautiful signatures of this automobile. "You see, right off
the bat we have something important in common."

So he knew Croaker
drove the vintage T-bird. How much else did he know? Croaker wondered
as he peered into the interior. Inside, as outside, it was buffed and
polished to perfection. This man loved his car.

"So what do you
think?" Majeur stroked the chrome. "It is a beauty, no?"

"It's beauty,
yes."

Majeur gave a strange
laugh, a little girl's high tee-hee. "Want to take it for a
spin?" He nodded as Croaker looked at him. "Sure as a
verdict you do." He dropped the keys into Croaker's hand, went
around to the passenger's side, and got in.

Croaker hesitated for
just a moment, then slid behind the wheel and fired up the ignition.
The engine thrummed happily.

"Make a right
when you get to Dixie Highway," Majeur directed as they pulled
out of the lot.

Had this been his
plan all along? Croaker wondered. Had he been that sure of himself?
He went north on Dixie, made the jog left, then right as it became
Broadway. No man's land, dangerous for a white man. Stopped at a
light, he risked a glance over at Majeur. He looked and spoke like a
litigator. Croaker could imagine him in the courtroom, fiery with
indignation as he addressed the jury. Croaker imagined him winning
far more cases than he lost.

Majeur provided more
directions, and they ended up cruising slowly down a deserted street
called Rosemary Avenue. Croaker had never been here before. Up ahead,
he could see the black wrought-iron fence of a cemetery.

"Park at the end
of the street, would you," Majeur said.

It was a No Standing
zone, but that didn't seem to bother the attorney any. When they got
out, Croaker saw that Majeur had exchanged his attaché for
what looked like an old-fashioned lunch box with a domed lid. Majeur
saw the direction of Croaker's look and said almost apologetically,
"Breakfast. With my schedule, it pays to be prepared twenty-four
hours a day." He shrugged. "Tomorrow never knows."

He led Croaker across
the pavement to the locked gates of the cemetery. He produced a key
and unlocked the gates. They slipped through and he carefully
relocked it.

Sun shone and birds
twittered, flitting from tree to tree. They strolled, seemingly
aimlessly, down moss-strewn paths, past granite headstones scrubbed
dull by wind and torrential rain. Occasionally, they passed the
tattered remains of an offering: the stems of flowers long dried to
dust, burned-down votive candles in red glass cups.

"Hungry?"
Majeur placed the lunch box atop a headstone and snapped it open.
This grave had a bouquet of fresh flowers atop it, tightly wrapped in
green florist's paper, as if someone had just placed it there. But
Croaker, scanning the vicinity, determined they were alone in the
cemetery.

"Breakfast for
two." Majeur pulled out a pair of big Cuban sandwiches of roast
pork and fried onions wrapped in waxed paper. He also had a thermos
of rich, dark Cuban coffee and Cuban sweet rolls.

"I think I'll
pass, for the moment," Croaker said.

"Pity. I waited
for you." Majeur was already unwrapping waxed paper from around
a sandwich.

You could tell a lot
about someone by the way they ate and the way they made love, Croaker
had found. Not surprising. Both stemmed from a primitive place,
animal instincts that existed in all human beings. But it was in the
way in which those instincts manifested themselves that spoke of how
a personality had been shaped, twisted, and bent, what was important
to it and what was not. In eating and making love, artifice ended and
the true person began to emerge.

Majeur was
fastidious. He manipulated the awkward sandwich the way Croaker
imagined a surgeon handled a living heart. Firmly, delicately,
precisely, Majeur took dainty, even bites out of the monstrous thing,
reducing it by stages to smaller and smaller squares until it was
entirely consumed. When he had chewed and swallowed the last bite, he
spun off the top of the thermos and poured coffee into the plastic
top. The smell of it was instantly overpowering. He did not touch the
sweet rolls.

When he was finished,
he did not even have to wipe his lips. He rubbed his hands together
and got down to business. "Mr. Croaker, my offer is a simple
one. My client has access to a healthy human kidney. It is compatible
with your niece's blood type and body chemistry. We would, of course,
provide all the necessary documentation for the doctor—I
believe her name is Jennifer Marsh."

The thought that
Rachel had a shot at life made Croaker feel woozy with elation, as if
he'd had too much of Bennie's mescal. But he needed to calm himself,
to get some assurances, to make certain this wasn't some kind of
scam. "If you have any shred of human compassion, Mr. Majeur,
you'll tell me the truth. Does your client really have a compatible
kidney? I mean if this is bullshit… well, a young girl's life
is nothing to fuck with, I can tell you."

"I assure you it
exists, Mr. Croaker, and that it is available to my client."
From an inside breast pocket he slipped Croaker a set of folded
papers.

"Is this a
registered kidney?"

Majeur smiled. "As
far as UNOS is concerned it's strictly kosher."

Croaker had seen
papers like these before; Jenny Marsh had shown them to him just
before she'd administered the compatibility tests. They were
certificates of specification—blood type compatibility, HLA
typing, so forth. Because Jenny Marsh had shown them to him, he knew
Rachel's blood type and HLA levels. A match of six out of six human
lymphocitic antigens would be perfect; the risk of organ rejection
that much less. Also, it would be too good to be true.

Croaker's pulse rate
accelerated as he saw that five out of six of the donor's antigens
matched Rachel's. Good God, this was no joke.

Majeur had the one
thing that would save Rachel's life It was like a gift from God.

Majeur bent forward
from the waist and whispered as he had done at the hospital entrance.
"So easily it will be available to your niece."

Croaker ruffled the
pages. "I'll want to hold on to these."

Majeur spread his
hands wide. "By all means. Show them to your Dr. Marsh. Check
everything out. My client wants you to feel secure in his promise."
He waited only a moment. "But do not take too long. As I am
certain Dr. Marsh has made clear your niece has very little time
remaining before even a compatible kidney will do her no good."
Croaker scarcely heard Majeur. His heart was beating so fast he could
hardly hear himself think. The kidney was real, it existed. It was
Rachel's only chance at life. He could not let it slip through his
fingers. But what did this joker and his client have up their
sleeves? "How does your client know about my niece's situation?"

"From Dr. Marsh,
I believe." Majeur held out one hand, palm up. "Indirectly.
She's made quite a number of phone calls on your niece's behalf.
Renal pathology is a kind of closed community, so the word spread
quite rapidly. He has many physician friends."

"And your client
is…?"

Majeur smiled. "For
reasons that will shortly become apparent, he wishes to remain
anonymous."

"Sorry,"
Croaker said. "I don't do business with anyone by that name."

"Oh, come now,
sir." Majeur spread his arms. "Back north in New York City
you dealt with many an anonymous source."

"Criminals."

Majeur stroked his
temple with a forefinger. "Not all of them, surely."

Croaker stared at
him, silent.

Majeur was
unperturbed. "In any case, I don't believe you have any choice
in this matter." He waited an appropriate moment, and Croaker
had another flash of him dramatically addressing a jury in closing
arguments. "Not, that is, unless you want Rachel to die."
His first use of Rachel's name was as shocking as a splash of cold
water in Croaker's face. "And she will die, sir,
without that kidney. Dr. Marsh—and others, I have no doubt—have
confirmed that."

Croaker said nothing
for a very long time. Dimly, like a background wash, he could hear
the traffic picking up on Broadway, Rap music, raw and searing, on a
boom box, waxed and waned, drifting away on the sunshine. Here, in
the cemetery, it was unnaturally still. And getting hotter by the
minute.

Croaker stirred.
"Okay. Say your client does have access to a kidney that's
compatible. How much does he want for it? I'm not a millionaire,
though my sister's got access to money."

"Oh, it's not
money," Majeur said. "No, no, nothing like that. In fact,
my client would like you to keep the keys to the Mustang."

"I don't think
so."

"Tangible
evidence of his sincerity and good will." Majeur carefully
stuffed the used waxed paper back into the lunch box. "There are
no strings attached, I assure you." He poured himself more
coffee. "Ownership papers are in the glove compartment; you'll
find them in order, I assure you. The car is yours no matter what may
eventuate."

Then he looked up at
Croaker and smiled his most benign smile, the one he reserved for the
members of the jury, the one they'd undoubtedly take back with them
to their deliberations. "Take it, sir. I know my client. It
would be an offense if you refused his gift."

By that one simple
statement Majeur was telling Croaker all he needed to know about the
mysterious client: he was rich, he was powerful, he had considerable
influence. He was generous, probably honorable, quite possibly
without scruples.

"What's the quid
pro quo for the kidney?"

Majeur nodded, as if
he approved of the decision Croaker had made. "Before I begin,
my client wants you to know that it was his wish to donate this
kidney to your niece free and clear. Unfortunately, circumstances
make that largesse impossible." His forefinger tapped the front
of the headstone. "You see this?"

Croaker looked at the
granite marker. It said: THERESA MARQUESA

BARBACENA 1970-1996.
MAY GRACE AND MERCY FOLLOW HER FOREVER.

"As you can see,
Theresa was twenty-six when she died." Majeur closed the lunch
box slowly and silently. "When she was murdered." His hands
were clasped loosely atop the lunch box, like attendants awaiting
further instructions.

"What
relationship was the girl to your client?"

It was Majeur's turn
to keep his own silent counsel.

Croaker took a deep
breath. "So in return for the kidney your client wants me to
find out who murdered her."

"Oh, no, sir."
Majeur had clearly reached the climax of his summation. "My
client already knows who killed her. Her husband, one Juan Garcia
Barbacena. He killed her by beating her insensate, then tying an
electrical cord around her neck and squeezing until her tongue popped
out of her mouth and blood leaked from her eyes."

Majeur was a master.
He waited just long enough for Croaker to have digested the grisly
details of the murder before he went on.

"And do you know
why he killed her, sir?" He shook his head. "It was for the
most banal of reasons. He had a mistress, and Theresa found out about
it. Instead of going to someone who could help her—someone such
as my client—and allowing him to act on it in his own time and
manner, she confronted Juan Garcia. She threatened him—verbally,
not physically, I assure you. She was not that kind of person. And,
in response, he promptly killed her."

"Sounds like an
open-and-shut case," Croaker said. "If what you say is
true—"

"It is true."

Croaker continued on
relentlessly. "If you have sufficient evidence, you or your
client should go to the police."

Majeur sighed. "Mr.
Croaker, in the best of all possible worlds that would already have
happened. Juan Garcia Barbacena would already be incarcerated."
That pause again; Croaker was getting to know this man's persuasive
style. "But this is not the best of all possible worlds. It is
reality. And the reality of this situation is that no matter Juan
Garcia's ..evil, no matter his culpability in this crime, he will
never be charged, let alone arraigned."

Majeur's fingers
curled around the smooth granite headstone of Theresa Marquesa
Barbacena, as if by that gesture he could somehow gentle her restless
spirit. "This man is protected, even from the direct force of my
client. There is a wall around him none can penetrate." He held
up a finger. "Almost none."

A slow creeping had
begun along Croaker's spine, as premonition began inexorably to align
itself with reality.

In a voice that
raised the hairs on Croaker's forearms, Majeur concluded his
summation: "You, sir, can get to him. My client is
convinced of it. Here, in a nutshell, is his proposal: in return for
the kidney that will save Rachel's life, you will penetrate Juan
Garcia Barbacena's defenses and you will kill him."

2

I'm not going to
kill," Croaker said, "for you or anyone else."

Majeur's offer wasn't
a gift from God, he thought. It was a deal with the Devil.

"I see."
Majeur put his hand on the front fender of the turquoise Mustang with
the same force of feeling he might fondle a naked thigh. They were
standing outside the gates to the cemetery, which the attorney had
relocked. From this vantage point they could just make out the bright
spray of color of the fresh flowers laid at the grave of Theresa
Marquesa Barbacena. "That sentiment will come as a shock to the
family of Ajucar Martinez."

With a tremor of achy
recognition, Croaker's mind flew back a decade. "Martinez was a
monster. He'd killed five hookers by the time I caught up to him.
Slashed their foreheads and cheeks, cut off their breasts before he
slit their throats."

"You shot him
dead," Majeur said coolly.

"Yes, I did."
Croaker was no longer surprised at the depth of information Majeur
had unearthed about him, even though much of it was classified and so
extremely difficult to obtain. Majeur's first contact with Croaker
was part of a major operation. These people were clearly not fooling
around. "He came after me with his straight razor."

"Blew his face
right off."

"I shot him in
the knee first," Croaker said. "It wasn't enough."

Majeur threw the
dome-lidded lunch box into the Mustang's backseat. "Then there
was Dunston McGriff."

"Another
psycho," Croaker recalled. "Raped his stepsister after he
had ripped out her heart and ate it. Then he went on a killing spree.
Four dead, six injured. Thirty-ought-eight shotgun was his weapon of
choice."

Majeur settled
himself against the fender of the Mustang. Sunlight spun dizzyingly
off its highly polished surface. "One bullet through the temple,
another through his neck. A crack marksman's kill. You iced him
clean."

"Had to. He was
about to take out my partner."

Majeur folded his
arms across his chest, closed his eyes, and put his face up into the
sun. "And now we come to Rodrigo Impremata."

Croaker looked at
Majeur. The attorney had been ever so successful in resurrecting the
old days. Events that Croaker had buried deep in his psyche strode
through his conscious mind like a host, jackbooted and bristling with
the weaponry of war. "What is this, a laundry list?"

"An accounting
of the dead," Majeur said. "If my sources are correct, Don
Rodrigo ran the coke cartel in New York's Barrio for many years.
Also, it seems, he ordered your father killed. Any discrepancies so
far?"

"None that I
know of." Croaker waited for the other shoe to drop: surely
Majeur must know about his freelance career with the feds.

Majeur nodded. "In
this age of prevarication and shifting culpability I appreciate your
candor, sir, surely I do," He tilted his face more fully into
the sunshine. "The Don was the worst kind of egomaniac, wasn't
he? As he amassed power, he brought reckless danger to everyone
around him. Even his colleagues wished him dead. But the Don was too
clever for them; he kept them weak and warring among themselves."
Majeur's eyes snapped open, catching sight of Croaker staring at him.
"Which is where you came in. Some bright spark who knew—or
suspected—that the Don had had your father wiped, leaked you
some key information—a hole in the Don's formidable defenses
through which a man of your abilities and determination could slip."
Majeur cocked his head to one side. "How am I doing?"

Croaker shrugged
noncommittally, but inside he was roiling. He thought he was over the
bitter feelings the Don had awakened in him. He thought he had come
out the other side of that particular maelstrom.

"That's sort of
the semiofficial story." Majeur's gaze drifted off through the
iron bars to Theresa's grave. "On the other hand, there are
those—and I must confess to belonging to this camp—who
believe you already knew who had your father whacked. I mean to say
you certainly did enough investigating on your own time."

Majeur's gaze snapped
back to Croaker. He was looking for confirmation. When he got none,
he went on. "Anyway, as this version goes, it was you who went
to the Don's bitterest rival and cut a deal: he rolls over on the Don
and you take the sonuvabitch out. Neat, clean, everybody's interests
are served."

Now Croaker could see
that Majeur had done so much more than resurrect his past. He had
evoked not merely remote events pressed into the pages of a
scrapbook, he had also managed to conjure up the emotions Croaker had
painstakingly interred in the dark recesses of his mind. Croaker was
reliving the red rage of revenge that had gripped him like a
hurricane-driven tide. He would have done anything to bring his
father's killer to justice—and had.

Majeur levered
himself off the car. "Tell me, how old were you when this
incident occurred?"

"Twenty,"
Croaker said. "If it happened like you said."

"Oh, it happened
just as I related it." Majeur opened the Mustang's door. "You
know it and I know it." He gave Croaker a thin smile. "So
let's save ourselves some time here. You have the essential
qualities: you are both skilled and resourceful."

"Hey, tell you
what, when I need a job reference, I'll call you."

Majeur gave him a wry
look. He was still in summation; no sarcastic bit of business was
going to derail him from his appointed task. "You know what they
say about killing a human being—either you can do it or you
can't. Period. I believe you have amply demonstrated that you know
how to kill a man. In fact, one could say that you are an expert at
it."

"My abilities
are not at issue," Croaker said. "If I killed in the past
there were damn good reasons for it. A, those perps deserved it. And,
two, I had no other choice."

"With Martinez
and McGriff, you may have a point," Majeur said. "But not
with the Don."

"There you're
wrong," Croaker told him. "We never could get anything on
the Don. No matter how hard we tried he kept slipping through our
fingers like an eel, as if he knew what we were up to before we knew
ourselves." He nodded. "And you're right. I did a shitload
of detective work on the Don. He had my father killed, no doubt of
it. But the people who spoke to me were too scared to go to the cops
and testify. And even if I had the proof, the Don would walk. He was
wired into the NYPD all the way downtown. He was an untouchable. And
in the meantime kids were dying from the shit he was selling. There
was no other way."

Majeur stood very
close to him. In the growing heat of the morning, the smells of
masculine cologne and sweat were suddenly rife. "There was no
other way. He was an untouchable." Majeur whispered the echo.
"In other words, he was protected on all sides."

And in just that way,
Croaker felt the trap snap shut on him. He looked into Majeur's
coffee brown eyes and felt the full brunt of the attorney's
intensity.

"Just like Juan
Garcia Barbacena is an untouchable, protected on all sides."
Majeur's hands lifted and fell. "Madre de Dios, the
filthy pig killed his wife in cold blood in the full flower of her
life. You think he didn't know just what he was doing, you don't know
Juan Garcia Barbacena worth a shit. He is Don Rodrigo Impremata all
over again."

Blood had risen into
Majeur's face, darkening his skin to the color of stained mahogany.
Whether or not Barbacena committed the crime, Croaker saw quite
clearly that Majeur believed he was guilty. Maybe Croaker had gained
an insight into the attorney. Maybe he wasn't just a cold and clever
mercenary, working the anatomy of the bigger buck. He wasn't perfect,
either. He hadn't uttered one word about Croaker's ties to the ACTF.
This had to mean he didn't know.

"I have only
your say-so for that," Croaker said. He was aware how with each
exchange Majeur was leading him deeper and deeper down this
particular path. But he didn't see that he had much choice. Rachel
had to have that kidney. And if Majeur was telling him the truth
about Barbacena… Treading morally suspect ground was new to
him, despite Majeur's magical mystery tour of his NYPD past. On one
point Croaker was clear: he had been justified in each homicide he
had committed. This situation with Juan Garcia Barbacena was another
matter altogether. He needed some time to check things out and to
think. But time was the one commodity he couldn't afford. Rachel's
condition wouldn't wait for every i to be dotted, every t
to be crossed.

"Some things one
must take on good faith," Majeur said. "Believe me, sir, we
have not lost sight of your niece's welfare."

"I need some
time, talk to Dr. Marsh, let her check out your documentation.''

"You have
twenty-four hours," Majeur said. "At that time, we trust
you will be prepared to move forward."

"Dr. Marsh will
want to be sure this organ exists."

Majeur smiled. "Can
and will be done." He nodded. "On the back of my business
card you will find a handwritten number. You may reach me anytime,
anywhere, within the next twenty-four hours. That is a guarantee,
sir. A tangible example of our good faith."

Majeur gave Croaker a
stern look. "Twenty-four hours, this is all the grace period my
client is prepared to give you."

This piqued the
detective in Croaker. "In something of a rush, isn't he?"

"As is your
Rachel." Majeur shrugged. "As it happens, my client does
have a most pressing deadline." He stepped closer to Croaker and
lowered his voice, though who he was afraid could hear him but the
dead souls and the seagulls that guarded them was anyone's guess. "At
midnight tomorrow, Juan Garcia Barbacena arrives in Miami under a
massive security blackout. He stays for twelve hours only while he
holds high-level business meetings. When and where are closely held
secrets. It is during this period you must terminate him."

Croaker felt the
sweat break out along his spine. "You're giving me
next-to-impossible odds. I wouldn't have nearly enough time—"

"Calm yourself,
Mr. Croaker. The moment you give me your assent, you will receive a
veritable torrent of details on Barbacena's itinerary, the number of
his bodyguards, the extent of their weapons, as well as a complete
workup of his preferences for food, clothing, shelter, and sex. You
see, we have no intention of throwing you to the crocodiles, Mr.
Croaker."

"Sure of
yourself, aren't you?'

"Certain events
in a man's life are inevitable." Majeur stuck out his hand. When
Croaker took it, he said with a surprising amount of genuine feeling,
"I entrust the Mustang into your hands without reservations.
Enjoy it fully, sir."

Back at the hospital
parking lot, Croaker dropped the lawyer off, watched him climb into a
new Lincoln Continental in the metallic grape color so popular in
Florida. He jotted down the license plate number before parking the
Mustang.

He unlocked the glove
compartment. Inside, he found papers of ownership and registration
for the Mustang. Both were already made out in his name, including
his address and Social Security number. What didn't these people know
about him? The transfer of ownership form listed Marcellus Rojas
Diego Majeur as the previous owner. No mention anywhere of any other
name, such as Majeur's mysterious client.

Upstairs, in the CCD,
he checked on Rachel. Matty was in the cubicle and she shook her
head: no change. He could see the terror lurking in his sister's
eyes, and his stomach turned over.

Croaker went to the
nurses' station in search of Jenny Marsh. But she was in the OR and
was expected to be there most of the day with four succeeding
procedures. He'd have to wait to see her until their dinner date at
ten that night.

He stuck his head
back into the cubicle to take a long look at Rachel, lying peaceful
and half-dead, her mother tense and tight-lipped beside her. There
was also a distinguished-looking man with gray hair and an
old-fashioned pencil mustache. He turned and gave Croaker a brief
nod. Matty introduced him as Dr. Ronald Stansky. Rachel's personal
physician.

The two men shook
hands.

"I was just
telling Mrs. Duke that I have a certain amount of pull at the United
Network of Organ Sharing." He murmured in a hushed voice, as if
he might wake the patient. "Perhaps there is something I can
do."

"That would be
great," Croaker said, "but I was under the impression that
UNOS was sacrosanct."

"Yes. Of
course." Dr. Stansky wore a tropical-weight sharkskin suit, a
neatly pressed white shirt, a dark, conservative tie, and the oily
mien of an undertaker. "I didn't mean to suggest I could just
ring up and have them pluck out a kidney, dear me, no."
Disturbed, he traced the line of his mustache with the tip of a long,
elegant forefinger. Then, he brightened. "But friends are
friends, and I have no doubt they will make their best efforts on our
behalf."

He squeezed Matty's
hand. "Don't you lose hope," he whispered to her.

Croaker tapped
Stansky on the arm. "Could I see you outside, Doctor?"

"Of course,"
Dr. Stansky said.

Croaker gave Matty an
encouraging smile as he held the curtain back for the doctor.
Outside, he said, "Dr. Stansky, my sister tells me you examined
Rachel six months ago."

"That's true."
Away from Matty, Dr. Stansky's almost obsequious demeanor dissolved
like ice in sunlight. Revealed beneath was a flintlike intransigence
most often brandished like a weapon by wary people in unfamiliar
circumstance.

"And?"

Dr. Stansky looked
aggrieved at this obvious waste of his valuable time. "She came
because the school she is attending required it. She was not ill."

This was like
wrenching water from a rock. "Go on."

Dr. Stansky spread
his elegantly manicured hands. "The test results were normal in
every way."

Croaker shook his
head. "Doctor, I'm curious about something. How is it that your
tests didn't discover that Rachel was smoking pot and cocaine and
dropping psychedelics?"

"I understand
that you were once a detective on the New York City Police Force."
Dr. Stansky's eyes were like hollow pits into which all genuine human
emotion vanished like a stone in a well. Croaker harbored a strong
suspicion this was a trait taught in medical school along with
Anatomy and Cytology. "Why ask a question to which you already
know the answer?"

"I wanted to
hear what you had to say."

Dr. Stansky was
bristling now. "It is child's play to pass a physical." He
waggled a finger in warning, as if he were a professor before an
abruptly unruly class. "It happens every day of the week in
every city in the country. It's outrageous but that's the reality of
it."

"But you
understand she's drug dependent now." Croaker had not meant it
as a question and he was met with stony silence. Getting a physician
to admit a mistake was tantamount to cajoling God into conceding
somewhere along the line in man's creation He'd erred. "Thank
you, Doctor. I appreciate your candor."

Dr. Stansky,
misinterpreting irony for apology, pursed his lips in what may have
been stiff acceptance.

Croaker spoke to
Matty briefly. He longed to tell her about his interview with the
mysterious lawyer Majeur, but he didn't have the heart. How cruel to
get her hopes up if he couldn't go through with the deal or if Majeur
was running a scam. But he did tell her he was continuing to work
with his government contacts to try to secure a kidney. Not exactly
the truth yet, but not a lie, either.

As he left the
hospital, Croaker considered where he would sleep that night. It was
too far to drive back to his house in Islamorada, and the idea of
staying with Matty in Harbour Pointe gave him the willies. Overbred
high-rises like that were no place for him. He dug in his pocket and
discovered he still had the keys to Sonia's house. He'd neglected to
give them back to Bennie.

He went through the
parking lot to the T-bird, turning over the notion of staying in El
Portal. He opened the trunk, punched in a number on a small keypad
he'd installed himself. A hidden door opened and he extracted a
padded briefcase. Inside was a small laptop computer. He hooked it up
to his cell phone, used the internal modem to dial up the State Motor
Vehicle database. The software asked for an access code and he typed
in a number Rocky Saguas, a detective lieutenant buddy on the
Metro-Dade Police Force, had given him. He got in and punched in the
license number he'd copied off Majeur's Lincoln Continental. The
system was jammed up. Typical. He switched to Bell South and, using
the same code, gave them the phone number of Sonia's dying friend,
Nestor. A moment later, Nestor's full name and address popped onto
the screen; it was not far from Sonia's, in El Portal. He
disconnected and got rolling.

The Town Center Mall
was on Glades Road, one of the two major east-west arteries that ran
from one end of Boca Raton to the other. The mall itself was between
Butts Road and St. Andrews Boulevard, one of those vast complexes
that virtually defined the east coast of Florida.

Despite his morning
shower, Croaker had been in the same clothes two days straight, and
he was about to project a halo of body odor like the rings of Saturn.
He went shopping at the Gap for underwear, a couple of pairs of
lightweight trousers that needed no alterations, and a half-dozen
assorted polos and short-sleeved shirts. He felt neat and clean by
the time he strolled back into the mall and ran right into Rafe
Roubinnet, the owner of the Shark Bar.

"Hey, compadre!"
As usual, heads turned at the rolling thunder of his voice. It seemed
to Croaker that Rafe was still, at heart, a politician. From what he
understood, Rafe had done a more than creditable job as mayor of
Miami. There were many who'd wanted him to run for re-election, but
he'd declined, never giving a reason. Like being a cop, politics took
its own toll; you never knew when you'd burn out.

"Just the man I
wanted to see!" Roubinnet, his blue eyes flashing, pulled
Croaker out of the mainstream of the mall's pedestrian traffic. He
wore white jeans, a blue-and-white striped short-sleeved shirtr and
Docksides without socks. He had the kind of muscles—well cut,
not as big as your head—that made most women's eyes cross, but
he was totally unself-conscious about them.

"I heard a good
one the other day," Roubinnet went on. Restaurateurs and
politicans, Croaker thought, they both love a good joke, preferably
dirty. And Rafe was at the top of the list. Jokes were his major
sideline; he seemed to have a warehouse of them. Maybe he got them
from his customers. "There was this Eskimo, see? One day he gets
into his snowmobile and heads into town. Just as he gets to the
outskirts, the snowmobile develops engine trouble, so the Eskimo
glides into a nearby service station. The mechanic comes out, takes a
long look at the snowmobile, then looks at the Eskimo and says, 'Blew
a seal.' And the Eskimo says, 'Nah. That's frost on my mustache.'"

Croaker laughed.
"Good one, Rafe." He was always aware of how Rafe's head
and shoulders stuck out as he maneuvered through the crowds. He must
have been murder to guard when he was mayor. Croaker clapped the tall
man on the back. "It's really good to see you away from the bar.
What're you doing off the Keys?"

"Provisioning
myself." Roubinnet laughed. "Ah well, every once in a while
I like to come north and see how the other half of the world's
living." To Roubinnet, up north meant Boca Raton. "But
with the fishing so good I'm surprised to find you here."

"Not unless you
can find me a kidney for transplant that matches my niece's
antigens."

"I was known as
something of a magician when I was mayor," Roubinnet said, "but
this is a bit out of my league. Sorry."

"Forget it. It's
not your worry."

"But where are
you staying up here?"

"I'm not sure
yet." His hand slid around the set of keys Bennie had given to
him. All of a sudden, he found he'd made up his mind. "No, I'll
stay at a friend's house in El Portal."

Roubinnet's face
split in a smile. "Ah, now there's a district with history and
style—with soul." He shook his head sadly. "The
nineties has no style—no soul. Instead, there's this big gaping
pit into which has fallen all of the musty crap from the fifties,
sixties, seventies, and eighties, recycled like a bad dream. Do you
take my meaning? Clothes, music, the new hip phrases—even
recreation. Video games are back, and so is pinball—very
low-tech. Beat poetry's returned to its status as being tragically
hip, and coffeehouses are cool again. Which reminds me, I'd better
get out all my old Ker-ouac." He laughed. Roubinnet had the kind
of laugh that made you want to laugh along with him, a natural
politician's innate gift.

His mood quickly
sobered. "There's worse, though. Drug-wise, heroin's in again."
He gave Croaker a rueful shake of his head. "All in all,
consider this. I'm telling you it's the invasion of the cultural
body-snatchers."

They walked out of
the mall. Heat, humidity, and brilliant sunshine hit them like a
fist. They began to stroll toward their cars. Croaker spent a bad
couple of moments debating with himself. He did not want to involve
anyone in this deal with Majeur, but he desperately needed
information. And when it came to the scoop on people in southern
Florida, Rafe Roubinnet was the man. His stint as mayor of Miami had
made him privy to the inner workings of the city and, indeed, the
state as a whole that few people got to glimpse, let alone master.
And consensus was that Roubinnet had mastered them. That meant he
knew the dirt on everyone who mattered in Florida—and probably
all of Central and South America as well.

When they got past
the jostle of people, Croaker said, "I've got something to ask
you."

"Shoot."

"You know an
attorney named Marcellus Rojas Diego Majeur?"

Roubinnet's clear
blue eyes looked startled. "Lew, mi compadre, is this a
casual inquiry or something of a more substantive nature?"

Croaker met
Roubinnet's gaze. "The latter."

The restaurateur
pursed his lips. "In that case, may I ask what kind of deep
water you have ventured into?" His gaze was as intense as it was
curious.

"I'm not sure
yet," Croaker admitted. "What's the deal with Majeur?"

Roubinnet looked off
into the distance, where valets for T.G.I. Friday's were busily
parking cars. "This counselor is hardwired into the Colombian
drug lords—not the ones who've been taken down recently with
all the fanfare and press coverage. No, no. Majeur's clientele is so
discreet, they don't seem to exist. I mean, even the professional
vultures at Hard Copy don't have a clue these boys are on
the face of the planet."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning,"
Roubinnet said, "that his clients are protected at such a high
level, you get up there and right away you get a helluva nose bleed.
If you're stupid enough to ask too many questions about them, they
cart you away on a stretcher and chances are rich you're never heard
from again."

Croaker thought about
this for a moment. "What about a man named Juan Garcia
Barbacena?"

"What kind of
bind?" There was genuine concern on Roubinnet's face now. "Look,
Lew, you went to bat for me. I don't forget things like that.
Whatever I can do to get you out of this situation, just say the
word." "Barbacena."

Those blue eyes
showed a snarl of unknown emotion. "Take it from me, Lew, you
don't want to know about this man." "I'm afraid I don't
have a choice."

"Is this true?"

"I'm very much
afraid it is."

Roubinnet waited
while a pack of Q-Tips—retirees with white hair and white
shoes—made their agonizingly slow way to their car. Abruptly
impatient, he took Croaker aside, into the shade of a stand of trees
that divided the parking lot. "Do you know what you're doing,
compadre?"

Croaker didn't want
to think about dire warnings now, even from Roubinnet. The truth was
he couldn't afford to. Not when Rachel's life was hanging in the
balance. If taking down Juan Garcia Barba- cena was the only way he
could save Rachel's life, he'd do it. Maybe Jenny Marsh would present
another alternative at dinner; or one of Dr. Stansky's colleagues
would come through with a suitable kidney. But Croaker knew these
were long shots without real odds. Like it or not, reality was
resolving itself down a single path: if, at his dinner with Jenny
Marsh, she okayed the paperwork on the kidney Majeur had given him,
he'd call the lawyer and accept his deal. Rachel was running out of
time.

"Rafe," he
said softly, "just do me a favor and tell me what you know about
this man."

Roubinnet looked
around him at the brilliant sunshine flooding the tree-lined parking
lot. "This is not making me happy, Lew. And I have to say I'm
doing you no favor."

"Granted and
noted."

Roubinnet pulled him
deeper into the shade of the trees. Beyond, in the drenching
sunshine, cars rolled up and down the aisles like sharks along a
reef. "Listen to me, Lew," Roubinnet said in a low voice.
"Barbacena is a devil. He's a man who controls many things.
Drugs are just one of them. Remember I said that heroin was the new
drug of the moment? That's his good fortune. He's got ties into the
Far East, opium factories that turn out high-grade heroin. He's so
low profile he's positively invisible, one of those few people no one
can get to."

"You mean he's
protected."

"Precisely so."

"Okay. By whom?"

"Politicians.
Government. They use him to keep control on rebellions, revolutions,
that kind of shit, throughout all of Latin America. Anyone down there
needs arms, they call Barbacena."

"He's the man,
huh?"

"Lew, I've come
to know that look. It's the one you had when you went after those
goons who were putting the squeeze on me. Hell, man, you've got to
take this seriously. This guy's the real thing." Roubinnet
lowered his voice. "Barbacena is tight with all the rebel
leaders, all the dissident commanders, all the wannabe-rulers,
generals, tin-pot dictators. They kowtow to him because he's their
supply line. And whatever secrets they tell him, whatever plans they
have, he passes on to his contacts in the South American governments.
In return, the government protects him unconditionally. He does
whatever the hell he pleases and they turn a blind eye. Get this.
They even sell him arms and take a kickback percentage of his
profits. Why not? They get fabulously rich off each other. It's the
way the world works."

Croaker waited a very
long time. A line of sweat rolled down the back of his neck. "Rafe,
someone wants this man dead. Badly."

He grunted. "I'm
not surprised. From what I hear, Barbacena's made so many enemies
they could form their own country. The whole power trip has gone to
his head. He believes in the illusion of his own invulnerability. No
one is invulnerable in this day and age."

Croaker waited while
another group of Q-Tips went slowly by. "Rafe, do you know who
has ordered his death?"

"I don't know,
compadre. But I could fill a whole legal pad with suspects.
Whatever, I don't think we'll have to wait long to see if they make
good on their order. Word is Barbacena's arriving here in Miami
tomorrow at midnight."

"About that. I
may need to get close enough to Barbacena to do some sniffing
around," Croaker said. "If so, I'll need all the help you
can give me."

Surprise was not a
word in Roubinnet's lexicon. He nodded. "Just say the word.
Barbacena is no friend of mine." He grasped Croaker's hand in
his firm, politician's grip. "For you, compadre,
anything."

On the way down to El
Portal, Croaker used the computer to dial into the Motor Vehicle
database again. This time he got through. The grape-colored Lincoln
was a rental from a local company. Croaker didn't know whether or not
to be surprised. He got the company's address and closed down. Since
he was just north and east of the location, he decided to go there
now. He exited the highway at Atlantic Boulevard and took it west to
441.

Margate was an old,
basically working-class area west of Ft. Lau-derdale. He turned into
a strip mall on the east side of 441. In front of him were, in
succession, a Cuban restaurant, a place that sold graveyard
monuments, and a shopfront with blacked-out windows called the
Margate Gun & Racquet Club. He had to laugh. The name was a
wicked jab in the ribs at those condo complexes in more precious
areas like Boca that used Yacht & Racquet Club in their names,
though they were, in fact, neither. At the southern end of the strip
mall was Gold Coast Exotic Auto Rentals.

When he went in,
there was a young woman behind the counter. She was chewing gum while
leafing through a recent copy of Allure. Otherwise, the
place was deserted. Fly-specked and sun-bleached posters of Porsches,
Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Lincolns, and the like were tacked to the
walls, which were panels of plastic with a wood-grain finish. A
couple of cheap, swaybacked couches and an old- fashioned metal
ashtray stand were what passed for furniture. A plastic ficus tree,
drooping in accumulated dust, stood like an arthritic pensioner by
the front window. The place had the unmistakable air of quiet
desperation.

The young woman
looked up at his approach. She was no more than twenty, with permed
blonde hair, bright eyes, and pink fingernails as long as knife
blades.

"Hi, I'm Vonda."
She pointed to a tag that gave her name:

VONDA SHEPHERD.

Croaker introduced
himself. "I'd like some info on a late-model grape-colored
Lincoln Continental."

Vonda's head bobbed
like one of those little dogs on the back shelf of a car. "Let
me check inventory."

"No, no,"
he told her. "I'm not interested in renting. I want to know
who's rented one from you recently."

"Why?" Her
voice had turned wary. "Was it in an accident?"

"Not to my
knowledge."

She popped her gum.
"Then I guess you're outta luck."

He showed her a badge
and her eyes widened. "Oh, wow!"

"Vonda, this is
very important. And I can guarantee your boss'll never find out."

"Gee, I'd like
to help you."

"Then by all
means."

"You don't know
my boss. See, the girl who was here before me, she didn't follow the
rules and she got shit-canned." She shook her head of bright
curls. "I can't show you anything without that court order."
She laughed nervously as she pulled at her pink short-sleeved blouse.
"I'm sorry."

She looked so wistful
standing there. Croaker felt sorry for her pent up in this rat trap
of a job. He could read her face because he'd seen so many like her.
Right now, she wanted nothing more than to get in her car and drive
off. Wherever she might end up, she wouldn't care. All she wanted was
to feel the wind in her face and to be away from this drag of a strip
mall.

"You come back
with a court order, it'll be out of my hands," she said. "I'll
show you whatever you want to see."

"Court order,"
he mused. "Sounds like this's happened to you before."

"Not to me,"
she said.

"Tell me
something, Vonda." He rested his elbows on the count-ertop.
"Would you know one if you saw one?"

"I sure would."
She dug out three sheets of coffee-stained paper stapled together,
tapped them with her clawlike fingernail. "My boss gave me this
copy of one. If it doesn't look just like this, he told me, it's a
fake."

He nodded, showing
her he was impressed. "Your boss sure seems to have covered all
the bases." He also seemed inordinately concerned about court
orders. "What's his name?"

"Trey Merli."
She spelled it for him automatically, as if she was used to doing it.
With a name like that he wasn't surprised.

"Thanks for your
help." He paused on his way to the door, as if just remembering
something. "By the way, what time do you close?"

"Six-thirty,
sharp."

Back outside, he
climbed into the T-bird and slipped in an Everly Brothers tape. As
the music played, he went east to I-95, got on heading south. He dug
out Majeur's business card and, on a hunch, used the computer to hook
into Bell South. He spent some time getting access, then gave the
software the number where Majeur assured Croaker he could be reached
night or day.

He glanced at the
"Processing" message. It was clearly going to take some
time to run down the number. He put the computer on standby mode.

By the time he got to
El Portal, he'd replaced the Everly Brothers with Jay and the
Americans. Jay Black started to sing, "Only in America."

Sonia's five-year-old
Camaro still sat in her carport. It had a green and blue save the
manatee sticker on its rear window. He sat for a moment listening to
the T-bird's engine tick over. Every so often the shouts of kids on
bicycles floated on the gentle breeze. Down the block, cars on NE
Second Avenue passed with uneventful sighs. He stared at the house
with its pale blue trim and its cement seahorses out on the front
lawn. The fountain they were holding up seemed to represent Sonia's
life. It was cracked and empty, a void waiting to be repaired and
filled; waiting for the bright flicker of wings, the soft cheep of
songbirds perched on its beautifully curved rim. How little it would
have taken to repair that fountain; and how little it would have
taken to make Sonia happy. Now, neither would happen. The mossy
seahorses and their cracked fountain seemed the very embodiment of
the melancholy that hung suspended over the place, as if Sonia's
restless spirit were still here, waiting to be set free. Maybe, like
Bennie's grandfather, she could not make the journey to the nether
world until whoever had murdered her had been brought to justice. The
Bonita twins. When it got so hot that the sweat began to roll down
Croaker's back, he got out of the car and went up onto the porch.
From there, he could see past Sonia's bedroom awning to the side of
the house next door. It was pink stucco with a three-foot-high layer
of bricks set in. A grapefruit tree in dire need of pruning overhung
its near corner.

He put the key in the
lock, turned it over. Inside, he could still smell her scent,
stronger now, as if the haunting were real and not a romantic figment
of his imagination.

"Sonia?"

He said it softly,
gently, and knowing that she would not answer did not make his
voicing her name any less imperative.

The pent air seemed
thick and cloying, as if Sonia had used the last of its oxygen during
her violent death. Croaker passed the vividly colored furniture on
his way to unlock and throw open every window in the house.

In Sonia's bedroom,
he kicked off his shoes and threw himself on the bed. The soft
afternoon breeze floated in through the open windows, and the awning
on the front window deflected enough of the early afternoon sun to
keep the room deliciously cool.

The recognition of
the bright Caribbean colors in Sonia's bedroom sent a pang of sadness
and loss through him. He turned. Through the open side window, he
heard an announcer's voice busily describing in detail a video replay
of an accident in a NASCAR auto race.

Curious, he got off
the bed and pressed his nose to the screen. He found himself looking
through the overgrown grapefruit tree into the side of the pink
stucco and brick house next door. Someone was listening to ESPN.
Croaker glanced at his watch and something clicked in his mind.

He padded around the
bed and went out of the house. As he knocked on the front door of the
pink stucco and brick house he felt his pulse quicken. This was, more
or less, the time of the afternoon when Sonia had been killed. If
someone was home and watching TV today, chances were they'd have been
doing the same yesterday—the day of the murder. He shook his
head as he knocked on the door again.

It finally opened and
Croaker found himself looking at a moonfaced man in a wheelchair. He
looked to be in his mid-fifties, dark-skinned and balding, with nubby
gray tufts of hair over his ears and down the back of his neck. His
eyes were watery, possibly from staring at the TV all day. His
shoulders were well developed and the hands that lay in his lap were
huge and thick-fingered.

He looked up at
Croaker expectantly. "What can I do for you?" From behind
him, the ESPN announcer was talking excitedly about ambulances,
yellow caution flags, and totaled cars.

"Sorry to take
you away from your show." Croaker stuck out his right hand. "My
name's Lew Croaker. I'm a friend of Sonia Villa-Lobos. You know, your
next-door neighbor."

"Oh, sure. My
wife knows her better than I do." The man in the wheelchair
stuck out his hand. "My name's Leyes. Pablo Leyes. Come on in,
if you like. I could do with the company." Then his gaze strayed
to Croaker's biomechanical hand and he nodded again. "I've got a
little something cool to drink."

Where Sonia's house
was bright and sunny, this place was dominated by shadowed gloom.
Heavy brown-and-white batik drapes stood guard alongside windows
overhung by aluminum awnings. All the colors were shades of brown.
The rooms were neat and clean, everything arranged just so, but the
furniture dated back to the late 1950s and early 1960s and seemed
nearly as neglected as the grapefruit tree outside. Without
refinishing and professional repair, most of it would have shown its
age a decade ago. Now the brown tweed sofas were tattered and worn on
seat cushions and arms, a couple of chairs had poorly mended
armrests, and the dining room table had legs so scratched the
unstained wood was exposed white as bone.

Leyes had wheeled
himself adroitly across floors bared to accommodate his disability.
Carpets and rugs would have slowed him down. He emerged from the
kitchen with a tray on his lap. It contained a large plastic pitcher
of what appeared to be lemonade, and a pair of cheap glasses with
little pastel-colored flowers on them. He nodded toward the scarred
wooden coffee table. "Would you mind?"

Croaker took the
portable computer off the table. It was on, set to an Internet web
site.

"When ESPN gets
dull, I like to surf the Internet." Leyes slid the tray onto the
table and, taking up the remote, killed the sound on the TV. "All
kinds of fascinating stuff to learn." Apparently, he didn't want
to miss a minute of the car crash's aftermath. "Can't take the
place of going out and doing, though. I was always a doer, y'know?"

He poured the chilled
liquid and handed Croaker a glass. "Looks like Key limeade,
smells like it, too." He winked. "But I'm here to tell you
it packs a mighty wallop."

Croaker took a long,
thirsty pull and dropped to one of the sofas, as if impelled by the
eye-watering strength of the drink. He thought he ought to get the
recipe for Bennie.

"That's homemade
rum you're drinking, son. One-ten proof, the real stuff." Leyes
laughed as he stroked the meat of one arm. "My Estrella makes
it, believe it or not." He waved a hand. "Well, my wife's
more than capable. Anytime you're sick in body or in spirit,
Estrella's the one to see. She's got quite a reputation. Justified as
hell, too, I might say, You just ask anyone at Jiffy Tyme Cleaners.
Go on. Everyone on Biscayne Boulevard knows her."

Leyes had drained his
glass, and taking up the pitcher, he topped off Croaker's glass, then
refilled his own. He leaned forward in his wheelchair and pointed at
Croaker's biomechanical hand. "Is it true what they say?"

Croaker knew what he
meant. "I still feel my real fingers, sometimes. And in my
dreams my hand is whole and beautiful as an opened rose."

Leyes nodded. "Worked
as a lineman for Bell South. Fell off a damn pole. Stupid filthy
accident." He slammed meaty fists into his thighs. "I was
supervisor for a while, but it wasn't the same. You know what I mean.
They meant well, I guess, but it was a bullshit job all the same.
Pushing papers, staring at computer screens. Christ, like to blow
your brains out stay at that 'til you retire." He returned to
stroking his arm, to comfort himself, Croaker supposed. "I keep
asking Estrella if she like go back to Paraguay. She doesn't, though.
I would. Never been there, but I've heard so many of her stories I
feel like I have." His expression turned wistful. "Asuncion's
a lot less dangerous than it is around here." He shook his head
and slurped his drink. "Think it's not a worry? Pretty dangerous
down by Biscayne Boulevard. I wouldn't let Estrella out after dark
over there, I can assure you. They say in the fifties 'n' sixties you
could hang out at Eighty-sixth and Biscayne all night. At the 8600
Club." His colorless eyes focused on Croaker. "That place
was something. Famous as hell. Open all the damn night. But come
seven in the morning, they'd throw everybody out into the parking lot
for a half hour so they could sweep the joint. That's where the
phrase 'eighty-six this guy' came from." He laughed. "No
damn fiction."

"I'd like to ask
you a question, Mr. Leyes. It's about yesterday. Were you here all
afternoon?"

"Sure was. Right
here watching ESPN." He smiled. "Always the same, my days.
It's okay. That way, I know what to expect."

"You were
alone?"

"Yep. Estrella
works. Nine to five."

Croaker leaned
forward. "Did you see or hear anything?"

"Well, I thought
I heard something."

"Like…?"

Leyes's moon face
screwed up in concentration so badly he looked like he wanted to
swallow his nose. "Dunno, really. I thought maybe an engine,
then I figured it was coming from the TV. Races, you know." He
worried his lower lip. "Later on, maybe that night, I thought,
No, it was more like a generator."

"A generator.
Could you tell where it was coming from?"

"Seems to me it
was from outside Miss Villa-Lobos's house."

"The front?"

Mr. Leyes shook his
head. "Nan. That was the odd thing. It was this side. Between
her house and mine."

That was the area,
Croaker thought, where he and Bennie had found the parallel drag
marks on the soft, wet ground.

"What do you
think was making this sound, Mr. Leyes?"

Leyes put the cold
glass against the meat of his arm. "Maybe it was coming from the
panel truck."

Croaker's heart
seemed to skip a beat. "What panel truck?"

Leyes shook his head.
"The white one. It was pulled up on the concrete path at the
side of her house."

"What time was
this?"

"Let me see…"
That scrunched-up face again. "I'd make it after one and before
two-thirty. I remember what races was on, that's how I keep track of
the time."

Croaker said slowly
and carefully, "Did you notice anything about the panel truck
other than its color? It's year, make, or model? The license plate?"

"It was white,
like I said," Leyes said. "Had a Florida tag, for sure. I
remember the colors. Don't know what kinda truck it was, though,
except it was American, not one of those Japanese brands."

"How about any
writing on it?" Croaker asked. "Was it municipal? Did it
have a company name?"

Leyes shook his head.
"No. No writing at all that I could see."

"Anything else?
Anything at all."

"Yeah,"
Leyes said. "Come to think of it, there was this little decal on
the back. It was the outline of a triangle inside a circle."

Croaker did not go
immediately back to Sonia's. Instead, he took the T-bird across El
Portal to the address Bell South had given him for Nestor, Sonia's
dancer friend. As he drove, he was all but deaf to the music coming
out of his speakers. He was thinking of what

Mr. Leyes had seen on
the back of the white van—the triangle within a circle, one of
the two symbols that had been written in blood inside Sonia's
refrigerator; one of the four magic signs Guarani healers took when
they were initiated into Heta I. The Bonita twins had been
taken in and trained in ritual and magic by Bennie's grandfather;
yet, clearly, they were no healers. They were reavers. Unlike the
vast majority of the houses in El Portal, which were neat and trim
and freshly painted, Nestor's was in gross need of repair. A
handyman's special, if it had been listed for sale.

The original stucco
was crumbling, revealing here and there the underpinnings of the
concrete block skeleton. Hard to discern just what the color had once
been; now it had been reduced to the dull pallor of oatmeal.

A mahogany-skinned
woman opened the door to his insistent knock.

"Like to wake
the dead, with a hand like that," she said by way of admonition.
"And you are?"

"Lew Croaker.
I'm a friend of Sonia Villa-Lobos." Still she hesitated until a
watery voice from the interior said, "It's all right, Mrs.
Leyes. Let him in."

She was a handsome
woman, looking a decade younger than her husband, with huge
coffee-colored eyes, high cheekbones, and a generous mouth. A thick
crop of hair was tied at the nape of her neck with a hand-worked
silver pin. It was black, save for a white streak like nighttime
lightning down the center.

An odd assortment of
smells assailed him: the sickly sour odor of the infirm, mingled with
the cleansing scents of cedar, peppermint, and rosemary. These last
rose in slender tendrils from the center of a bronze brazier on a
side table.

Estrella Leyes stood
aside, a small woman with a fiery countenance. But she was as quick
to smile as to defend. "I'm sorry," she said as she closed
the door behind him, "but Nestor has trouble with his bills.
Pobrecito."

A phlegmy
laugh erupted from the corner of the room. "What she means is
I'm broke. I haven't enough money left even to pay my rent. But
that's okay; I don't have much life left, either."

The voice belonged to
a man who, like the house, was in a shocking stage of disrepair. His
affliction, however, was irreversible. Skeletal, white as a corpse,
he reclined on a dusty rattan chaise lounge that had been overlaid
with dingy sheets and rucked cotton blankets. A network of blue veins
could be seen pulsing slowly just beneath the tissue-thin veneer of
his skin.

"Hush, now,"
Estrella Leyes said. "Where will that kind of talk get you?"

Nestor swiveled a
head around on a stalklike neck. "One step ahead of the process
servers."

Once, not so long
ago, he must have been an exceptionally handsome man. He had a high,
wide forehead and an aquiline nose. But prolonged high fevers had
robbed his wide-apart eyes of most of their color. And when he'd
danced, surely he'd not been afflicted with the rubicund sores that
pocked his cheeks and lips. He was as scabbed over as a chronic
drunkard who can't keep his balance.

"I think you
should be in a hospital," Croaker said. "If you don't have
insurance, I could speak to some—"

"Oh, I could get
hooked up to tubes," Nestor said. "I could engage life
support with all the fervor of a Baptist to water." He smiled
and raised one enervated hand. "But why trust to blind science
when I have Mrs. Leyes to heal me?"

"Now I do insist
you keep still." Estrella Leyes threw a cautionary look over her
shoulder at Croaker as she admonished Nestor: "You need to
husband all your strength."

"An odd phrase
to apply to me, but I take your meaning nonetheless." Nestor's
head dropped back to striped pillows damp with sweat. "What Mrs.
Leyes means to say, Mr. Croaker, is that she doesn't trust you to
observe the secrets of her healing arts." No doubt because of
the advanced nature of his infirmity, he had developed the
disconcerting habit of speaking with his eyes closed. In this manner,
he seemed no more than a bizarre puppet being manipulated by an
unseen force.

"Nonsense!"
Estrella Leyes exclaimed, though she took a protective step toward a
large reed basket that sat atop a round table.

"Mrs. Leyes,"
Croaker said gently, "if it will put your mind at ease, I just
spoke with your husband. He told me rather proudly of your reputation
as a healer."

A shy smile spread
across Estrella Leyes's face. "Si. That's Pablo."

As she began to
unload items from her reed basket, Nestor said, "I haven't seen
Sonia today. How is she?"

"Fine,"
Croaker said. "But since she was called away on business, she
asked me to stop by."

"That's most
kind of you," Nestor said.

Out of the corner of
his eye, Croaker could see that Estrella Leyes had turned to give him
a dark and penetrating look. He wanted to smile, to reassure her, but
was disconcerted to find that he could not. He seemed drawn in by her
mesmerizing gaze until her eyes welled up with tears and she gave a
stifled sob.

Nestor turned his
head and his pale eyes opened. "Mrs. Leyes?"

"Nothing,
pobre." She shook her head, not trusting herself to
look at him. "I dropped a powder, that's all."

Nestor sighed and his
eyes slid closed, as if he no longer had the strength to keep the
lids open. As Mrs. Leyes prepared her herbs and powders he dropped
into a deep sleep.

Croaker nodded
wordlessly and Estrella Leyes bowed her head. "I could hear her
ending in your voice. It was a violent and terrible death."

"How do you know
that?"

She lifted hands dark
with the stains of her herbs and medicines and moved them around him
as if in outline. "A disturbance here… and here. You
carry around the memory like an overcoat."

He was not even aware
he had taken hold of the spirit-stone in his pocket until he felt its
unnatural warmth against his palm. He took it out and displayed it
for Estrella Leyes.

"I'd like to use
this on Nestor," he said softly. "Maybe it will help."

"Dios."
Her eyes opened wide, and quick as the wind, she curled his fingers
around the smooth stone and held them there, clasped tightly.

"Do you know
what this is?" she whispered. Her gaze searched his face.

"I pressed this
against my niece's chest and she awoke temporarily from a coma, even
though the doctors swore it was medically impossible."

Estrella looked
fearfully at the dark green stone he held. "It is not wise,
señor, for you to be carrying such a thing."

"I disagree. Do
you know what I found inside Sonia's house?" He dipped his
forefinger in a dark powder and, on the tabletop, traced out a
triangle inside a circle, a dot within a square.

With a sharply
indrawn breath, Estrella Leyes swept away the symbols. In their
place, she drew the outline of a human eye, inside which were two
irises. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him. "You know what
you should not know. You are no healer."

"Nor am I a
reaver," he said. "But the people who made those signs are.
And I want them."

"Why?"
Though said softly, there was a sharpness to the tone that warned him
of the importance of his answer.

"These people
murdered Sonia. As you said, her death was violent and terrible."
He took a breath, knowing he was about to embark on uncharted waters.
"Also, I can feel her restless spirit inside her house."

"You think she
cries out for vengeance from beyond the grave?"

This woman was almost
better at interrogation than he was, Croaker thought. "No. It
wasn't Sonia's way to seek revenge. She hated the thought of
violence."

"Es verdad."
Estrella Leyes's coffee-colored eyes appeared depthless. Something in
her expression softened like the stone cold winter ground at spring's
first thaw. He seemed to have passed some kind of test. "Then
what are you proposing?"

"Rest,"
Croaker said. "Eternal rest for her spirit."

Estrella Leyes came
closer and, in a hoarse whisper, said, "Who has been teaching
you about Heta I?"

"Bennie
Milagros. When we covered our faces in soot and buried Sonia. Do you
know him?"

"I was
acquainted with Humaità Milagros, his grandfather."
Estrella Leyes turned abruptly away. "Everyone for five hundred
miles around Asuncion knew Humaità. He was a great and revered
Guarani healer."

"Did you go to
his funeral?" Croaker asked. "Bennie told me it rained for
ten days. He was there for the whole time."

"That's true
enough." Estrella Leyes was busying herself with her potions.
"He and Bennie had a difficult relationship. But there was an
unbreakable bond between them; special among all the grandchildren.
Humaità had a secret name for Bennie he always used when they
were together. Sero, he called him. Sero, the mountain. That's how he
thought of him. 'The mountain keeps its own counsel,' he told me one
day. The mountain has its own concept of time and place.' I knew he
was speaking about Bennie."

"I also heard
that Humaità drowned in the Paraguay River."

There was a muffled
sound as the canister she had been holding fell to the tabletop.
Croaker caught her as her knees began to buckle.

"Mrs. Leyes—"

She was so light he
could imagine she had the hollow bones of a bird. But she had not
fainted. Peering down at her face as he held her, Croaker could see
that her eyes had rolled partially up and her eyelids were spasming
like someone in REM sleep. She might have been dreaming while awake.

Without conscious
thought, he pressed the spirit-stone into the hollow of her throat.
Almost immediately, he heard her voice. It was soft, as echoey as if
it were coming not from her throat but from somewhere very far away.
"I come from a family of Guarani fisherfolk," she said.
"And on that terrible day twenty years ago, I was with my father
and brothers on the Paraguay. I was twenty-two, already married once
and widowed and I was back to working the family trade as I had when
I was a child. The sun had not yet risen above the mountains, but the
misty air had about it the color of the inside of a pearl shell. I
loved that time of the morning. So lovely, the riot of tropical
colors muted. And so perfectly still you could hear the fish swimming
beneath the water."

Croaker crouched
down, Estrella Leyes clasped firmly in his arms. He was afraid. He
wanted to wake her from her trance, but he wanted more to hear the
oral history she was reciting.

"We found
Humaità's body," she went on. "At first, we thought
it had become entangled in the roots of a mass of mangrove that
stretched out red and black into the river. The shoulders, chest, and
arms were all red. At first, we thought it was the detritus borne on
the current, dyed red by the tannin leached from the mangroves. But
then we noticed that it was not prone, floating, as it would have
been if he'd stumbled and fell.

"He was sitting
up, rootlets beneath his armpits. And he was covered in blood. It was
clear he had been placed in that spot. Because he was a healer, no
animal or bird had touched him. Even the primitive crocodiles kept
their respectful distance.

"No one moved
except my father. He scrambled off the boat and pulled the body out
of its nest of roots. And I remember this so clearly it might have
happened this morning: he rolled Humaità over, belly down in
the river, and scrubbed at his face. He scrubbed and scrubbed and all
the while he was sobbing like a child in need. I'd never before seen
my father weep, and it terrified me. Soon after, on my father's
direction, we helped him drag Humaità onto the boat. His face
was so clean that it was impossible to believe I'd seen what I had:
when we'd found him, each cheek was painted in blood. On his left
cheek was a triangle in a circle; on his right cheek was a dot within
a square."

Estrella Leyes's
eyelids ceased to spasm and her body went limp in Croaker's arms. A
moment later, she stared up at him out of her dark eyes. She seemed
calm and serene, as if waking from a long, rejuvenating slumber.

Croaker palmed the
spirit-stone. "Mrs. Leyes, are you okay?"

She lifted a hand and
slowly traced something on his forehead with the tip of a slender
forefinger: an oval with two dots inside—the double-irised eye.
"He wasn't destroyed. I can feel Humaità's spirit in
you." She looked up at Croaker in wonder. "All these years

I held my peace about
his death because my father swore us to secrecy. He made us swear by
the story we all gave as testimony: that we'd found Humaità's
body floating facedown in the river."

"Why did your
father do that, Mrs. Leyes?" Croaker asked. "Why did he lie
and make you give false testimony?"

"Because he'd
seen the symbols and he was afraid."

"Afraid of
what?"

"He knew the
boys who had taken those symbols as their own. Everyone did: they'd
become almost like Humaità's adopted grandsons. And they'd
killed him. They'd left their symbols on his flesh to prove it."

"Antonio and
Heitor," Croaker said. "The Bonita twins."

She nodded.

"He was their
mentor; he loved them like a father. Didn't they love him in kind?"

"What do those
two know of love?" Estrella Leyes said. "They have been
severed from the Family of Man; and God has turned His face from
their countenance."

Despite his First
World upbringing and education, Croaker felt a chill lance through
him. "But why did they kill him?"

"After Humaità
had taught them everything they needed to know, they had no more use
for him." Estrella Leyes seemed to shudder in his arms. "You
see, I believe Humaità knew how evil they were. His hubris was
in believing he could deliver them from this overriding evil. His
lasting greatness was that he believed in the goodness in all people.
But I think this is what destroyed him. The Bonitas were beyond
change. And, the tragedy is, in trying to change them, all Humaità
managed to do was to give them more power. Terrible power." She
clutched at him. "You called them reavers and you are right."

She made a sign and
he lifted her back onto her feet. "This spirit-stone you carry,
it belonged to Humaità, didn't it?"

Croaker nodded.

She put both hands
over his right hand. "Keep it safe. Keep it close to you."
Her gaze raked his face and her voice turned urgent. "Promise me
this because you will find the reavers—or they will find you."

"I promise."

Estrella Leyes looked
deep into his eyes. Whatever she saw there must have satisfied her
because she nodded and went back to her herbs and potions.

As she worked,
Croaker said, "Tell me about the four symbols."

Once, Croaker had
seen a troupe of Cambodian dancers perform.

Estrella Leyes had
extraordinarily long fingers, and she used them as these dancers had,
giving distinct expression and a sense of presence to the most
mundane gestures.

"The triangle
within a circle is the sign of man; fire; death." Her fingertips
blackened as she broke dried fungi into spore dust. "The dot
within the square, the sign of woman; water; resurrection." She
combined the black spores with a yellow powder that smelled vaguely
of cacao. "A cross within three concentric circles denotes a
bird; flight; journeys; the heart of the universe."

"And the
fourth?" Croaker asked. "The sign Humaità took as
his own?"

Her features were
creased in concentration as she poured a brown liquid into the paste
she had made. "The double-irised eye represents the dreams we
see with our inner eye"—she broke off long enough to point
to a spot in the center of her forehead"—our Third Eye."
Her fingers were like a pair of fans as she spread them in an arc.
"Always, the dreams guide us. This is what Heta I
means. The Many Waters are the paths of the Innermind. The Innermind
is revealed to healers by dreams." She broke open a small,
withered branch and extracted the white, cottony material from its
pith, added it to the tangy brew. It smelled of the rich humus along
the banks of the Paraguay. "These are reckonings of the past,
paintings of the present, and portents of the future."

"I've dreamed of
the double-irised eye," Croaker told her.

She seemed
unsurprised. "And you will dream of it again," she
promised.

"Whatever you're
doing here," he said from over her shoulder, "will it
work?"

Estrella Leyes
shrugged. "There are some things God has determined are fixed."
She shook her head. "I am foolish, perhaps. Like Humaità,
I attempt the impossible." She turned with a vessel filled with
a brackish liquid clasped between her hands. "This is something
you should remember when you come face-to-face with the Bonitas.
Their place in the universe is fixed. It cannot be changed, by you or
anyone else. Humaità tried. He thought he recognized the spark
of humanity in them and they killed him. Do not make the same
mistake."

She went to where
Nestor lay slack and grimly pallid, and gently woke him. Croaker held
him upright while she put the vessel to his lips and made him drink.
But neither her carefully mixed potion nor Humaità's
spirit-stone pressed to his bony chest could stem the voracious tide
of the opportunistic viruses eating him alive.

3

When Croaker returned
to Sonia's house, there was someone waiting for him on the front
porch.

"You the
boyfriend?"

He was a handsome man
in his thirties, with clean, smooth features. His hair, gelled and
slicked back into a ponytail, was the color of burnt caramel. He was
slim and agile, which said to Croaker that he was athletic. He wore a
mushroom-colored silk suit of expensive manufacture and,
incongruously, a pair of Keds. Beneath the suit was a cream Versace
polo shirt with two large gold-and-black enamel buttons. He was
imposing, in the manner in which he seemed to confront head-on
whatever life put before him. What was most startling about him,
however, was his amber-colored eyes.

"Who wants to
know?" Croaker responded as he reached the porch.

The slim man hit him
so hard and so fast Croaker was stumbling backward before he even
felt the blow. His ears rang as he gripped the porch rail, and there
was a growing numbness on the left side of his jaw,

"Next time I'll
put you all the way down."

Croaker could see
that the amber-eyed man was both surprised and pissed off that the
punch hadn't decked him. "I ask the questions here. This's my
sister's house."

"You're Sonia's
brother?"

"Carlito."
Raw hostility oozed out of him like poison from a snake bite. "I
see it didn't take you long to move in, Anglo."

Croaker came off the
porch railing like it was the top rope in a boxing ring. "My
name's Lew Croaker. And this was the most convenient place to stay…
for the time being." How to handle the delicate matter of
Sonia's death? As far as Croaker knew, only he, Bennie, and Maria
knew the score. "Maybe we should talk inside."

The slim man had
about him the predatory aspect of a fox. "Madre de mentiras,
what could we have to talk about?"

Croaker shrugged as
he opened the door with his key. "Come on in," he called.

The amber-eyed man
walked with a minimum of effort, as if he were an expert diver
arrowing through water. Inside, he craned his neck. "My sister
here?"

Croaker shut the door
behind them. "Carlito, when was the last time you saw Sonia?"

The slim man stared
at him with his amber eyes. He had about him an uncanny stillness.

"Or spoke to
her?"

"What is this,
the Spanish Inquisition? You have no business asking me these
questions."

Croaker gestured to
one of a pair of couches covered in tropical cotton. "Why don't
you have a seat?"

Amber eyes seemed to
glow in the last of the late afternoon light. "What the hell is
this all about?"

The other man seemed
to unwind in stages until he was sitting bent over on the rolled arm
of the sofa. "When?"

"Sometime
yesterday afternoon." Croaker took a breath. "She was
murdered."

The handsome head
snapped up. "Murdered? ¡Madre de mentiras! How?
By whom?"

"She was
decapitated. I don't know yet by whom."

"What're you, a
detective?"

"As a matter of
fact I am." Croaker showed him one of the official badges.

Tears glittered in
the amber eyes as he nodded. "What happened to her body?"

Croaker thought of
the white van with the symbol painted on back and the parallel tracks
he'd found around the side of the house. That's where Antonio and
Heitor had sliced off Sonia's head. There was no reason to tell her
brother, who was already on a short fuse, what had happened to her
and every reason not to.

"I have no
idea," Croaker said without inflection.

The slim man grunted.
"Some detective!"

Carlito's reactions
came into focus. Something about them seemed the slightest bit off,
Croaker thought. What was he missing? Had Sonia and her brother been
estranged?

"What is it you
want here?" The amber eyes blazed with naked enmity. "What's
in it for you?"

"Keep quiet a
moment," Croaker said.

As the amber-eyed man
came off the sofa arm and took a threatening step toward him, Croaker
put up his hand. "Just listen," he admonished. This gave
the other pause, and in that moment, Croaker said, "Can you feel
her?"

"For what?"
Maybe mysticism wasn't his thing. On the other hand, he wasn't
laughing.

"For a way
home," Croaker said. "She's held here, without peace. Until
I find out who murdered her." He looked into Carlito's face, saw
eyes hard as chipped stone. "To answer your first question,
yeah, I was the boyfriend, or I would have been if she hadn't been
murdered." He took a breath. "She was a beautiful woman in
every way."

"So, what is it,
maricone, you were fucking her brains out?"

Croaker took the
other man totally off guard. With titanium and polycarbonate fingers
Croaker crushed his suit lapels and expensively woven cotton polo as
he rammed him across the room until his back fetched up with an
explosive bang against the far wall.

Croaker was so close
he could faintly smell the steak and grilled onions Carlito had eaten
for lunch. "A man who doesn't respect women is a pig,"
Croaker said in idiomatic Spanish. "But a man who doesn't
respect his own sister is no man at all."

A weird pale light
flared in Carlito's eyes and just as quickly fled.

"And don't call
me maricone." Croaker kept to the idiomatic Spanish.

A slow, crafty smile
spread across the slim man's face. "You don't talk like an
Anglo. And you surely don't think like one, either."

Maybe that was as
close as a man like Carlito—hostile, arrogant, muy
macho—could get to an apology.

Croaker let him go
and stepped back. Carlito stared down at the front of his jacket,
which looked like it had been run over by a mountain bike.

"You know,"
he said slowly and evenly, "I've killed men for less than this."
A gravity knife bloomed in his left hand. The stiletto blade flicked
upward into dead air, not a threat in any way. They'd been through
their macho phase, these two men, and it had ended, more or less, in
a draw. The tilted blade was just an illustration to a story he was
telling. "I slit their throats from one end to the other and
watched the blood pump out in a slow, sensual rhythm."

Croaker was getting
the measure of him. He was like a child, really, in the way in which
he studied Croaker's reactions to his outrageous behavior. Croaker
could imagine a young Caligula reciting a list of his egregious sins,
greedy for reaction from those older and more easily shocked than he.
But, like Caligula, this lightning rod of a man was a daft and
dangerous child, never to be taken rightly or underestimated.

"Then, when
their brothers and sons came after me," he went on, "I'd do
the same to them. I'd lie awake at night, creating a shining path,
willing them to come over the wall like evil dreams, to invade my
house." He smiled that sly smile. "You see, I made them
sin. I never invaded their house, I never laid a hand on their
property as they did mine." The knife point flicked upward, sent
spinning in a blur a ray of vagrant sunlight. "I made them sin
and then I punished them for it until my blade ran red with their
blood."

Croaker went into the
kitchen, as much to take a break from the overpowering personality as
to slake his thirst. There was half a six-pack of Corona beer in a
cupboard, but he was reluctant to put it on ice. The interior of the
refrigerator was still painted with Sonia's blood. He found an open
bottle of Cuervo Gold tequila, and he poured double shots into a pair
of glasses. He came back into the living room, handed one to Sonia's
brother.

When the two of them
had drunk some, he said, "I'd like your permission to stay
here." It was the formal construction he would have used if he'd
asked Carlito for his sister's hand in marriage.

The slim man had put
away the gravity knife. "This is not a small thing you ask."
He stared into the depths of the pale liquor. "But it is not a
small thing you are doing for Sonia—and for me."

"I understand,
and I appreciate your kindness." Croaker switched topics and
tones. "What I'm trying to follow up on is a possibility Heitor
and Antonio Bonita might have murdered Sonia. You know them?"

"You have
already begun your investigation, I see." The slim man sat down
on the couch. A lozenge of late afternoon sunlight struck him across
the face, firing his burnt caramel hair. "What makes you suspect
them?"

"The manner of
your sister's murder. Decapitation seems to be their specialty."

Amber eyes regarded
Croaker evenly. "How much do you know about Heitor and Antonio?"

Croaker sat in a
facing chair. "Not enough."

"I was in
business with them once—about five years ago."

"Five years—then
you must know Bennie Milagros."

The amber-eyed man
was so still it was possible to see the pulse in the side of his neck
just above the collar of his sleek Versace shirt. "Oh, yes,"
he said at last. "Benito is well known to me." His head
swiveled and the amber eyes flashed briefly. "You are friendly
with him?"

"Perhaps so."

"You are a
cautious man. That is all to the good." He nodded. "With a
man such as he all due caution is warranted."

"What do you
mean?" Croaker said.

The slim man seemed
not to hear him as he took a contemplative sip of his tequila. He
switched to idiomatic Spanish. "You must understand, these
men—Heitor and Antonio, the Bonitas—make it their
business to be in anything that's dangerous enough to give them big
profit margins: drugs, war materiel, black-market telecommunication
and computer components, semiconductor chips, girls, murder-for-hire,
white slavery—yes, even that in this day and age. But what
makes their operation unique is that they're never connected directly
with any of these industries." He waved a hand in the air. "Oh,
I know what you're thinking, Detective—all these international
criminals hide behind a maze of offshore and foreign shell
corporations. True. But the Bonitas go one better. They own nothing.
Instead, they set other people up to be the manipulators behind the
maze of shell corporations. They give a good deal of autonomy to
these men as they become movers and shakers. As long as you perform
you're left pretty much alone with your operation, your bottom line,
and your monthly payments—sixty-five percent of profit. Another
thirty or so percent is plowed back into the business. Which leaves
three percent, five if you're very clever, left over at the day's
end."

"I assume,"
Croaker said, "you're speaking about yourself."

"The thing is,"
the slim man continued, not quite ignoring the statement, "their
scheme is insidious. I mean, the more successful you are at running
what they've set up for you, the more you're left alone and the
stronger the illusion becomes that you're actually in control. But
it's all a lie, you see. In reality, you're nothing more than a
patsy. You're there to make money for the Bonitas. If you do that,
well and good. You go home with your pittance. If you stumble and the
bottom line falls, they come and cripple you and spend a damned long
time at it. In the meantime, you take all the risk—and if the
operation blows up in your face, if, one black day the federates
come pouring through your back door, you take the fall. There's
nothing whatsoever to link the Bonitas to the laws you've broken.
And, if you're stupid enough to rat them out, they'll hunt you down
and make you die in any one of a variety of very unpleasant ways."

"Like, for
instance, decapitating you."

The amber-eyed man
hefted his empty glass. "Is there any more of this?"

"On the kitchen
counter."

In a moment, he
returned with the bottle and a full glass. He set the tequila on the
coffee table between them like a signpost.

The sun had dropped
below the horizon, and Carlito's face was wreathed in shadow. He
appeared even more handsome, a magnet for vulnerable girls. But in
this twilight, the sinister aspect he cultivated like a pet croc had
become pronounced. Croaker could imagine him as a gunrunner or a drug
dealer for the Bonitas, moving like a dancer through glittering
circles of money and power, gorging on the role, becoming one with
it. It was difficult, if not impossible, to leave the orbit of a
supernova without incurring profound and permanent damage. Croaker
wondered what form of damage Car-lito had suffered.

Despite the open
windows, it seemed abruptly stifling in the small house. Croaker got
up, stood looking out into the street. The sky was orange and purple,
but below the treetops sharp shadows had crept across the lawns and
parked cars, making of them inky shapes that held unfathomable
secrets.

"What did you do
for Heitor and Antonio Bonita?"

"I ran guns and
munitions. The usual stuff."

He said it too
quickly and Croaker knew he was lying. There was nothing usual about
this man.

Croaker said, "How
did it end?"

"Badly."
The amber-eyed man had come, silent as a cat, to stand beside him.

In unspoken consent,
perhaps, they had neglected to turn on any lights inside the house.
What illumination existed came from the streetlights. To a
passerby—if there had been one—they might very well have
been mistaken for ghosts, disembodied faces peering out the plate
glass window of a newly deserted house.

"I was in love
once," Carlito said from close beside Croaker. His voice was
thin, almost reedy, barely above a whisper. "It seems so long
ago. Five years; an eternity." He lapsed into a brooding silence
from which Croaker was reluctant to rouse him. Croaker knew from hard
experience that painful memories needed their own time to work
themselves loose.

The amber-eyed man
cleared his throat, as if he were getting rid of excess emotion.
"Anyway, I asked her to marry me. She was a good girl, this
woman. Pure in heart and spirit. She saw something in me…"
He waved his glass and tequila sloshed around its sides. "No
matter. She didn't know what I did, not precisely, but she didn't
like it. She said she could smell a stink on me, and when I said to
her, 'What stink? I'm no damned river fisherman,' she held me very
close and whispered in my ear. 'The stink I smell is not on your
body, it comes from your soul.'"

The slim man downed
the last of his tequila. For a moment, he seemed inclined to fetch
the bottle, but then he changed his mind. "Stupid girl, I
thought. What does she know? But then, lying beside her at night, I
would fall into bad dreams and I would awake in the morning with the
stink of burning flesh in my nose. This went on for weeks. And
finally, I realized I was dreaming of my own flesh burning." He
turned to Croaker. "That's when I knew she was no stupid girl.
She was very, very special. She smelled the corruption on me, and I
thought, She must hate this smell. Why does she stay with me? How can
she love me? Because, señor, sex is easy. It's like
breathing, what could be more natural? But love is hard. Love does
things to you you have no hope of understanding. Love changes you
even when you have no intention of being changed."

He glanced down at
his empty glass and away again, into the anonymity of the shadowed
street. "And then, finally, I understood. She was waiting.
Waiting for me to come to hate the stink as much as she did."

The amber-eyed man
had put aside his now useless glass. His hands had turned into fists
and he pressed them onto the window-sill as he leaned against it. "I
wanted to change, I really did." Tension corded his
ramrod-straight arms, distorting the expensive fabric of his suit.
"But everything in life has a price. Some things in life you
think you must have, but the price, if you knew it beforehand, you'd
never, ever pay."

He took a deep
breath. "God or something like Him—Fate, perhaps—took
this woman away from me."

Croaker watched as he
turned and walked away from the illumination of the streetlights into
the darkness of his sister's house. He wanted to ask a question that
burned in the back of his throat, but the air was still too charged
with the agony of memories. A great evil was entangled here like a
web that crossed time to damage lives beyond any hope of repair.

"You're welcome
to this place," Carlito said in a strangled voice. "I want
no part of it. If you feel Sonia's spirit here, all the better. It
seems good that she can speak to you in this manner."

Croaker knew he was
thinking of the way in which this woman—who had died five years
ago—had spoken to him. At last, he came away from the window
and, his eyes adjusted to the gloom, found

Carlito withdrawn to
a corner, as if needing to fend off all the bad karma he'd stirred
up.

"Do you believe
in spirits?" Croaker asked him.

"I'd like to
think so." Those lambent amber eyes focused on him. "Yes."

Of course he would,
Croaker thought. He'd give anything to hear this woman's voice again,
even in his dreams.

Croaker felt a coil
of electricity at the answer to the question that was burning the
back of his throat. "Did you say her name was Rosa?"

"Si.
Rosa Milagros."

Christ,
Croaker thought. That's how he knew Bennie. He fell in love with
his sister and she was decapitated by the Bonitas. Maybe this
explained the subtle strangeness of his earlier reactions: he'd been
living Rosa's murder all over again.

Carlito's eyes were
wide and staring. It was as if he was talking to himself, as if
Croaker were not there at all. "I'm damned now, I know that.
Rosa could have saved me. I have done things … I continue to
do things…"

He turned his face
away and, crossing the room in three huge strides, flung open the
door and was gone.

As Croaker drove
north on I-95 he flicked on a tape of Jan & Dean's greatest hits.
Surf music from the glorious 1960s. What better songs to think by? On
either side of him thrill seekers in Camaros and Firebirds wove in
and out of the multiple-lane traffic, passing on the right whenever
they saw an opening. They had a habit of cutting back in inches from
the trailing car's front grille. If you traveled I-95 regularly it
didn't pay to think of the highway's accident ratio.

He wanted to turn
over in his mind the startling revelation that Sonia's brother had
been in love with Bennie's sister, Rosa. What role did he play in
this widening web? It was clear to Croaker that he knew more about
Antonio and Heitor than he had revealed.

One thing was for
sure: the moment Carlito went out the door, Croaker felt as if a dark
and dangerous cloud had vanished.

He got off the
highway at Atlantic Boulevard and went west. Jan & Dean had
segued from "Surf City" into "New Girl in School."
Before his dinner date with Jenny Marsh in West Palm Beach, he had
another stop to make. He turned into the strip mall off Highway 441
and ejected the cassette of Jan & Dean.

He dug out his
computer and checked on the status of the request for information on
the private phone number Majeur had given him.

The database had
spewed out a paragraph's worth of information. First off, it was a
cellular number. No surprise there. But the strange thing was it was
not listed in Majeur's name. The individual the number was billed to
was one Benito Milagros.

Bennie. And his
mysterious, secretive midnight run tomorrow. Was it a coincidence
that Juan Garcia Barbacena was coming into Miami at precisely
midnight tomorrow?

Croaker sat for a
long time in the strip mall while traffic whizzed by in either
direction. Black palms danced against an indigo sky. Illumination
from overhead sodium lights threw the hoods of parked cars into sharp
relief. At night, the blacked-out windows of the Margate Gun &
Racquet Club reflected the next-door granite monuments with their
maudlin sentiments carved for all eternity. Croaker was unpleasantly
reminded of his meeting with Majeur in the cemetery, and that brought
back into focus what he was going to have to do in order to save
Rachel's life.

He punched in
Bennie's number.

"¡Hola!"

"Bennie, it's
me."

"Amigo,
what's up? Any news on your niece?"

"Status quo."
Croaker noticed he was gripping his cell phone too tightly. "Bennie,
you know a lawyer named Majeur?"

"No."

"Marcellus Rojas
Diego Majeur."

"Lewis, I think
with a name like that I'd remember him if I knew him. Which I don't."

"Rafe had heard
of him."

"Roubinnet?"
Was that a wary note Croaker detected in Bennie's voice? "What're
you doing hanging out with him?"

"I ran into him
is all," Croaker said. "But he told me this Majeur's wired
into heavy-duty drug people."

"You two on the
outs? Didn't you want to back him for a second term as mayor?"

"That was a
while ago, Lewis. Times change. People, too."

"Listen,
Bennie—"

"I gotta go.
Sorry. The Colombian delegation I'm expecting's at the door. Later,
amigo. And watch who you hang with."

"Bennie, I don't
know whether I can make that run we spoke of yesterday."

Silence on the other
end of the line. But Bennie had not hung up.

"Hey, what's up
with you, amigo?" Croaker heard the brittle tone to the
voice. "I'm counting on you."

"I know, Bennie.
But something's come up and I—"

"Now, listen.
You gave your word. This is too damn important. What the fuck's
changed since yesterday, huh? I think—know what I think, amigo?
You been listenin' to evil little bees buzzin' in your ear."

"You wouldn't
mean Rafe."

"Face-to-face,"
Bennie snapped. "You an' me. I can, like, blow these fuckin'
Colombians off for a couple hours. All they seem to be interested in
anyway is yapping like dogs among themselves."

"Okay. Meet me
in the lobby of the Royal Poinciana Hospital. That's in Palm Beach."

Croaker put down the
phone. Friction between Bennie and Rafe? What the hell was going on?
Bennie said he didn't know Majeur, yet phone company records clearly
showed Majeur's cell phone billed to Bennie. Why was Bennie lying?
And what the hell was so important about his midnight run? This was a
Bennie he hadn't seen before.

He struggled to
remind himself that there were many aspects of Bennie's life he knew
nothing about. As close as he might have become to Bennie, how well
did he really know him? Surprises were popping up daily. Suddenly the
world seemed to have been turned on its head with the possibility
that his friendship with Bennie held some dark and sinister hidden
agenda.

He got out of the car
and stowed the computer in his trunk. From the same hidden bay, he
began stuffing his pockets with small metallic and plastic items. He
needed to deal with the job at hand, and so he cleared his mind of
all the questions for which he had, as yet, no answers.

It was just after
seven. Gold Coast Exotic Auto Rentals was closed for the day. Vonda
had been right on the money.

He strolled around to
the back of the mall, where the deliveries and garbage pickups for
the complex were made. He located Gold Coast's rear door and checked
it out. A nearby sodium streetlight would point an unmistakable
finger at anyone in the immediate vicinity. He had a cure for that.
He worked on the base of the light for three or four minutes with his
stainless-steel nails, using them as pick and wire cutters. The light
winked out. Shadows closed in as if starved by the stark glare.

As expected, the rear
door was alarmed. Croaker had a cure for that, as well. When he had
located the Bell South junction box for the rental company, he pried
open the metal door. After verifying the alarm system was hardwired
into the phone lines, he cut the telephone cables.

Quickly, using a
stainless-steel nail, he picked the lock on the rear door and slipped
silently inside. The rental office was dark, the street and traffic
lights from out front the only illumination. It smelled dankly of
mildew and the musty electronic charge of machinery.

He kept his head down
and crept behind the counter. He saw a small Miami Hurricanes
pennant, perhaps Vonda's, in a dusty jam jar, along with some other
miscellaneous souvenirs. A woman's sweater, old and moth-eaten, lay
folded on the shelf beneath, along with a well-used nail buffer,
bottles of spectacularly colored nail polish, and one of those small,
collapsible umbrellas.

Farther on, he came
to the computer terminal. He was about to turn it on when he felt
something. A faint but discernible aura of heat was emanating from
the back of the computer. He squinted at his watch. Eighteen minutes
after seven. Vonda had told him she closed at six-thirty, sharp. Even
allowing for a few minutes of overtime, the computer should have been
cold by now.

He fired up the
computer and right away he knew there was a problem. The software the
company was using booted up well enough, but if it was to be
believed, there were no files, no directories, no lists of names. The
software was virgin, as clear of data as it had been the day it had
been installed. Someone had purged the hard drive of memory, and
judging by the temperature of the machine, it had been done within
the last fifteen minutes.

He searched the
nearby area for a tape backup or floppy disks, knowing full well he
wouldn't find them. Anyone clever enough to purge a hard drive would
take or destroy the tape and floppies as well.

It was on his hunt
for the backups that he came upon Vonda. Or, more accurately, all
that remained of her. Her head, severed as neatly and expertly as
Sonia's, was lying in wait for him. Covered in shadows, it stared at
him from a shelf as if it were another of her own souvenirs. Blood
ran along the rim of the shelf, looking for an indentation off which
to drip.

Croaker felt as if he
had been kicked in the stomach. He sat back on his heels, trying to
breathe deeply. He needed to get back his equilibrium. He closed his
eyes for a moment. Immersed in darkness, he could hear the low wash
of the traffic going by outside. Not a voice, not a dog bark
disturbed the almost absolute silence. He stared at Vonda's head and
his breath caught in his throat. He had to blink to make sure it
wasn't a trick of the shadows, that he wasn't hallucinating, but
there it was. A black three-inch floppy disk was wedged between her
clamped jaws. As Croaker moved closer, he saw the floppy had a label.
Something was written on it and he moved slightly to read it:

LOOKING FOR THIS,
DETECTIVE?

He raised his hand,
trying to pry the floppy from between Vonda's lips. He pulled hard
and the entire head dropped into his lap. He should have laughed at
the absurdity of the situation, but it was too sad.

The moment was
positively surreal. Vonda's head in his lap, the eyes staring up at
him, looking blankly for help. And above them, in the center of her
forhead, a symbol drawn in blood: a dot within a square.

The Bonitas.

With an effort, he
maintained his grip on reality and peered down at her mouth. It
looked as if someone had Krazy Glued her teeth to the floppy.
Curiouser and curiouser. This cannot be happening, he
thought. Next thing you know, I'll see the White Rabbit racing
past me, muttering "I'm late, I'm late for a very important
date! No time to say Hello, Good-bye! I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!"

Carefully, he
extruded his stainless-steel nails, chipped the floppy free of the
glue. He pocketed the floppy, took Vonda's head by the steellike
tendrils of her permed hair and replaced it on the shelf. Then he
froze. He'd heard something—a soft footfall, perhaps, or the
furtive movement of a body. Someone was here! Not a creature
with white furry legs and a pocket watch. Someone with a dark and
dangerous psyche.

Antonio or Heitor?

He listened beyond
the throb of blood pulsing in his veins. Nothing. Wait, he
cautioned himself. Just wait and listen.

Ghostly images of
exotic cars appeared and just as quickly vanished off the tacky walls
in the headlights of the traffic outside. Dust motes floated through
the air as if dislodged by restless spirits. Voices drifted in from
out front. A car door slammed, an engine coughed to life, and
headlights swung across his field of vision.

At precisely that
moment, he heard the noise again. He turned his head away from the
lights, but he could see nothing in the deep gloom that, a moment
later, returned to the interior. He heard a slow drip and thought
that perhaps Vonda's seeping blood had found its way off the shelf.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw a flash, as of something
metallic. It was at the far end of the office, moving from left to
right, toward the rear. Someone was in here with him.
Someone who, having murdered Vonda, had then purged the computer's
hard drive, and left him the ballsy note. Someone who knew him, knew
he'd be here.

Which one? Antonio or
Heitor? He wondered whether it mattered.

It was just about
then he heard a sharp crack as of glass shattering and knew he'd run
out of time. He risked a glance above the top of the counter, heard
and saw nothing in response. Still crouching, he crab-walked as fast
as he was able behind the counter until he came to the other end.

There, he could see a
windowpane had been smashed out, leaving only shards hanging from the
edges of the frame. From outside, he heard something that sounded
like a heavy-duty car engine. And beneath it, another noise, deep and
pulsing… a generator!

He levered himself
through the jagged opening, out into a section of the rear of the
strip mall hidden from the area near Gold Coast's back door. He
emerged just in time to see a white panel truck jouncing away from
him toward the far entrance to the highway. Maneuvering between the
glass fragments strewn all over the concrete apron, he began running
very hard, all the while trying to read the rear tag.

He was gaining on the
panel truck, and now he struck out at an angle, anticipating its turn
onto 441. The truck slowed for an instant to better take a speed bump
just before the exit, and Croaker left his feet, leaping with his
left arm extended. His biomechanical fingers struck the rear bumper,
flaying paint and plastic until they grasped and took hold.

He tried to regain
his feet but the truck lurched forward over the speed bump and his
hip and knee struck the blacktop with a sickening jolt. His right
hand fumbled for a hold on the plastic bumper but could find none.
The panel truck had reached the exit and he had only an instant to
gain a less tentative purchase. He struggled to pull himself up onto
the rear bumper.

He had one foot and
the opposite knee on the bumper, but right then the panel truck
screeched as the brakes came off and it slewed in a screaming
right-hand turn out into traffic.

Centrifugal force hit
Croaker like a mule kick in the small of his back, and his arm was
almost wrenched clean out of its socket. His foot slid along the
slick bumper top and gave out onto whistling air. It dragged along
the blacktop, sparks flying from his shoe sole, and he just missed
having his kneecap smashed. If he didn't get himself up onto the back
of the truck, he'd be flayed alive. But he was not about to let go,
not when he was this close to the murderers.

The truck was weaving
dangerously in and out of traffic. Horns blared angrily, and behind
him, Croaker could hear the protesting squeal of jammed-on brakes.

He heaved himself
upward, swinging his legs with all the force he could muster, and
hooked his biomechanical hand over the left-hand door handle. A
moment later, he got his feet planted on the bumper. He clung there
for a moment, shivering, as if he were on a sheer rock face. Wind
buffeted him, and his upper body rattled painfully against the metal
of the rear doors as the truck continued to weave back and forth
between lanes. He did not want to look down at the blurred road. That
was when he saw the mystic symbol—a triangle within a
circle—just as Mr. Leyes had described it.

The panel truck must
have been doing seventy. Croaker braced himself against the left-hand
door. His biomechanical fingers were wrapped securely around the
handle. He reached up and grasped the handle of the right-hand door,
jerked it down, and pulled hard.

It slammed all the
way open, taken by the back-rush of wind. At that moment, the panel
truck swerved into the next lane and Croaker almost lost his balance.
One foot slipped off the plastic bumper and only the strength of his
biomechanical hand kept him from being pitched headlong onto the fast
receding road.

He had to use all his
concentration to haul himself back up onto his precarious perch. That
was when the panel truck screeched to a jarring halt. Gravity and
momentum warred with each other for a split second and he felt as if
he were in free fall. Then gravity won out and he was slammed with
tremendous force into the left-hand door.

Almost immediately,
the truck lurched into gear and accelerated hard again, putting more
strain on his biomechanical fingers to hold him fast as he slammed
into the rear. Half-dazed, he felt himself being jerked sideways as a
fist grabbed his shirtfront. His head came around and he found
himself staring into a pair of amber eyes, as familiar as they were
baleful. The face was as handsome and predatory as a fox's. Hair the
color of burnt caramel sprouted from atop a high forehead with the
wildness of a cockscomb. It was Carlito!

Wide lips pursed as
the amber-eyed man said, "So this is the detective!"

A white-knuckled fist
slammed into Croaker's face. Stars exploded behind his eyes, and if
it wasn't for the passing streetlights flickering off the arced blade
of a scalpel, he might have missed it. The scalpel, held in the
amber-eyed man's right fist, was coming right at his throat. He shook
his head, trying to clear it. The amber-eyed man smiled grimly and
Croaker caught a glimpse of another face just behind him in the
truck's interior. Another pair of amber eyes blinked at him out of a
face identical to the first one.

My God,
Croaker thought with the sudden impact of revelation. Twins!

"Not Carlito,
he's dead," the second amber-eyed twin said as if reading his
mind. "I myself had a hand in his demise. His history had a
sadder end than I told you." His eyes blazed with a feral
intensity. "So swiftly we meet again, Detective! Who would have
thought? Madre de mentiras, I had fun at our first
encounter! How about you?"

The first amber-eyed
twin brandished his scalpel. "Antonio!" he cried over the
wail of the wind and the screech of the tires. "He's like a tick
on our backside. What shall we do with him?"

It wasn't Sonia's
brother he'd met at her house, Croaker thought wildly. It was Antonio
Bonita!

Croaker managed to
get his right arm into position to deliver a blow, but the amber-eyed
twin who was Heitor Bonita slammed the heel of his shoe into
Croaker's ribs. Pain electrified him as he tried to catch his breath.
Heitor kicked viciously again, and Croaker's tentative footing failed
him. He slid to his knees, hanging by the death grip he maintained on
the door handle with his biomechanical fingers as Antonio watched
with the utter detachment of a god.

Heitor leaned out of
the open doorway. As he did so, his gaze was caught by reflected
light spinning off Croaker's biomechanical hand.

"Now what is
this?" Heitor said. The wind plucked his words away but not
before Croaker marked the particular timbre of the voice.

"The hand,"
Antonio said. "I told you."

"So you did,"
Heitor said. "I want it." The scalpel arced in a blur, and
Croaker could see what was about to happen. Heitor seemed fascinated
by the biomechanical hand. Like a lepidopterist on a field trip who
discovers a new species of butterfly, he was not going to let it get
away. He was going to cut it off Croaker's hand at the wrist.

Croaker tried to
clear his head, to gather his strength, but with each passing instant
his perch was becoming more difficult to main- tain. He looked up
into Heitor's face—Antonio's face, there was no difference—and
his blood ran cold.

For that moment he
had the eerie sensation of being pinned to a dissecting table. Four
eyes peered at him avidly. Two sets of nostrils flared as if at the
scent of fresh blood. Two mouths curled in the same beatific smile,
as if the men were embarking on a sacred mission.

Croaker, with no
other option left him, let go of the door handle. It was that or lose
his biomechanical hand.

With no warning at
all, Antonio had lunged for him, the fingers grasping him in an iron
grip. Saved from the scarifying fall to the ribboning highway just
below him, Croaker scrabbled desperately for purchase on the rear
bumper.

Fear was thick in his
throat. It was purely instinctive; it came from the dark and lonely
place in the mind where no thought existed. He was not afraid of many
things. He had, in fact, come across many diseased minds. But these
twins were different. They exuded a single terrifying aura that made
his stomach clench. Seeing them was like looking at two boys
delightedly playing at the bottom of a grave. A joy wreathed them, so
pure it was almost holy.

Two sets of amber
eyes bored into him and he felt a gust of wind billow through him
like an evil premonition. Antonio's grip on him tightened and Heitor
maneuvered in the gaping doorway of the truck as he prepared for his
bit of impromptu surgery. As he did so, Croaker got an almost
hallucinatory glimpse inside the truck. He saw a metal and porcelain
machine with tubes running from it. It looked familiar. Where had he
seen something like it before? But there was no time to think. His
perch on the rear bumper gave way, whipping him out over the highway.
He glanced down. The panel truck was running at such high speed the
pavement was one long blur. Fall the wrong way and he could easily
shatter his ribs or, worse, his neck.

And he would have
fallen, but Antonio, braced against the side of the door opening,
held him steady in his viselike grip. For an instant he peered up
into Antonio's predatory face and something like sheet lightning,
mysterious and potent, passed between them.

"Not now . . .
not yet…" Antonio stayed the arc of his twin's scalpel
with his other hand. "Pacienda."

"No!' Heitor
cried. "I want it! I'll have it now!" And he
wrestled his arm from his twin's grasp. The scalpel flashed evilly in
the passing streetlights. It was coming again and there was nothing
Croaker could do. Heitor would have his trophy.

Then Antonio did a
very odd thing. He smiled down at Croaker in an almost benign manner.
"The dark stones know." The howling wind clawed his words
to shreds as his fingers opened and he relinquished his grip.

In that frozen moment
when the razor edge of the scalpel passed within a hair's breadth of
his left wrist, Croaker choked back violent nausea and did the only
thing he could do. He tucked his head into his chest and willed his
body to relax as it was flung off the back of the speeding truck and
plummeted to the pavement of the highway.

He bounced and
bounced again, then rolled as he had been taught, keeping his body
relaxed and letting the momentum take him freely. He tumbled head
over heels along oily concrete and cinders, amid a welter of
screeching brakes and shouted curses. The only thing that saved him
from being run over was that traffic had stayed well back of the
white panel truck that had been driving so erratically.

As it sped away in a
cloud of diesel fumes, he managed to gain the side of the highway.
Not long after, a young surfer in a beat-up pickup stopped and asked
if he was hurt.

Croaker, fighting
nausea and fierce aches in shoulder and ribs, said no, but a lift
would be just fine. But on the jouncy ride back up the highway, with
rap music blaring in his ears, he was haunted by the sight of those
avid faces, twisted in greed and lust. His teeth gritted in pain and
he closed his eyes against the fierce glare of oncoming headlights. A
flare of remembrance: a stainless-steel and porcelain machine in the
white panel truck's interior, tubes going into and out of it. He was
sure he'd seen it before. Where? Then the sound of the compressor
welled up inside him. The compressor that Mr. Leyes had heard when
Sonia was killed, the compressor he'd heard, later, outside Gold
Coast Exotic Car Rentals where Vonda had died. The compressor that
was used to power…

With a cry that
startled the surfer out of his music-induced reverie, Croaker sat up
straight. He had it now! The Bonitas were using a perfusion machine.
That's what he had seen in the back of their panel truck. The
compressor made it portable. Now he had his proof. Antonio and Heitor
had taken a panel truck, a perfusion machine powered by a compressor,
and made their organ harvesting operation both portable and mobile.

The scalpel Heitor
had brandished flashed through his mind like the arc of a shooting
star in the night sky.

Croaker had the
surfer drop him far enough away from the strip mall so he wouldn't be
traced back to Vonda's murder site. As he walked, could not stop
himself from picturing Sonia's headless body—and Vonda's—opened
up, the organs plucked out like ripe fruit by the reavers. Right now,
the perfusion machine might be pumping Belzer solution through
Vonda's kidneys, perhaps Sonia's as well. It was ironic and terribly
unfair. They had access to kidneys and he had none—save through
Majeur. But where was that kidney coming from?

Abruptly, he put his
hand to his throbbing temple. There was that pernicious thought
again, undermining the very fabric on which he'd built his life.
These were organs from people he knew—people who had been
cold-bloodedly murdered. What kind of monsters were the Bonitas? He
didn't yet know, but he had to find out.

Croaker shuddered.
Unbidden, he saw Antonio's and Heitor's faces again. He was struck by
their amber eyes, lambent as moons, cold, cruel, pitiless. Estrella
Leyes was right. Never had he witnessed two people so estranged from
God or the rest of the human race.

4

An hour and fifteen
minutes later, Croaker parked in the lot outside the Royal Poinciana
Hospital. The vintage Mustang Ma-jeur's client had given him was
right where he'd left it. It sure looked beautiful. He found himself
thinking about buying a cover for it. The ferocious Florida sun would
otherwise burn away the finish, fade the upholstery, and dry up all
the exposed rubber parts. That he already considered it his own car
was disturbing. One way or another, he'd have to decide what to do
with it.

With a rag from the
glove compartment, he wiped down the steering wheel and the leather
seat of the T-bird that had been spotted with blood from his cuts and
abrasions. It was almost eight-thirty. All his heroics, it seemed,
had gone for nothing; the license tag he'd gotten off the rear of the
Bonitas' panel van was a dead end. His uplink to the Motor Vehicle
database informed him the number was off a seven-year-old Honda Civic
registered in Dade County. Tags got stolen so often, he knew, the
cops didn't bother looking for them anymore.

Not surprising that
the panel truck had stolen tags. The Bonitas were thorough
professionals. He was beginning to get the measure of them. Their
evil, like urban spoor, was unmistakable. Despite that, Croaker found
himself ruminating on curious aspects of his two encounters with
Antonio. How to figure Antonio saying, Love does things to you
you have no hope of understanding. Love changes you even when you
have no intention of being changed. Was this true? Had Antonio
truly loved Rosa Milagros? Impossible. He'd killed her; he and Heitor
had lopped off her head as if she had been some water buffalo ripe
for the slaughter. God or something like Him—Fate,
perhaps—took this woman away from me, Antonio had
confessed. Meaning what? He and Heitor were men who felt nothing. And
yet he seemed stigmatized by Rosa's murder. They're both waiting,
aren't they? Rosa and now Sonia. They're joined somehow. Why
confess anything to Croaker? What was Croaker to Antonio? He recalled
with electrifying intensity the look Antonio had given him, that had
penetrated like a virus deep into the marrow of his bones. Both
Bennie and Estrella Leyes seem convinced that Humaità
Milagros's spirit lives on inside me, Croaker thought. Is this
what Antonio saw in me? Is that why he'd said, I'm damned
now, I know that. Rosa could have saved me. I have done things…
I continue to do things…

Then he remembered
Estrella's warning to him, that Humaità had thought he'd
detected a spark of humanity in Antonio and Heitor and they had
killed him for it. She'd told him not to make the same mistake.
Unconsciously, he curled his hand around the spirit-stone. He felt as
he had at Sonia's funeral: as if he was vulnerable to dark spirits.

Action was the only
way to snap himself out of these disquieting thoughts. He grabbed his
Gap bag out of the trunk and headed directly into the men's room to
wash off the rest of the blood and change his soiled and shredded
clothes. Because he went through the Emergency Room, no one gave him
a second look.

But when he entered
the main lobby to get to the elevator bank that would take him to the
CCD unit, he ran right into Bennie.

"Jesus Christ,
amigo, where the hell've you been?" Bennie was clearly
fuming and it was an intimidating sight. He grasped Croaker's elbow
with fingers that felt like steel pincers, steering him into a
corner. "Listen, I want to know what the hell's going on."

Croaker did not
appreciate Bennie's grip. "What are you talking about?"

"We had a deal,
clean and simple, right? The boat thing. Then, you call and, like,
clear out of the blue you're talking with Roubinnet and in almost the
same breath you're, you know, bailing. I want to know why. What did
that sonuvabitch say about me?"

"First, take
your hand off me."

"When you answer
my question." Bennie's fingers tightened their grip. "Hey,
amigo, wake up. This is no fuckin' joke. I make a deal with
someone I expect it to happen, period."

"What is that?"
Croaker was angry now. "A threat?"

"Play it like it
lays, amigo."

"Bennie, I
thought we were friends."

Bennie spat onto the
marble floor. "Friends don't back out on their word."

"They don't lie,
either," Croaker said. "What are you and Majeur up to?"

Croaker wrapped his
biomechanical fingers around Bennie's wrist. "You don't know the
top Latin American drug lords, Bennie? You don't know who reps them
over here? Is that what you expect me to believe?" For a moment,
they faced each other—friends once, perhaps; now nothing more
than two stags clashing antlers.

"Let go."
Croaker felt his blood rushing in his ears. "Don't make me do
this."

"Amigo,
consider any action before you take it."

Slowly and
deliberately, Croaker exerted pressure until Bennie was forced to let
him go. "I don't know what the hell is up with you. But if you
keep on lying, I'm quits." He punched the elevator button.

Bennie took a
threatening step toward him. "Fuck that. I've still got plenty
to say. A deal's a deal. No one bails on Bennie Milagros. No one,
comprende? I'm gonna hold you to that midnight run—"

"How are you
going to do that?" The elevator doors opened and Croaker stepped
in. "Have your Colombian buddies talk me to death?"

Bennie made a sudden
lunge at him. The doors were closing, but Bennie was quick as a
sprinter. He slammed the rubber bumpers with his shoulders and the
doors ricocheted back. He stepped into the elevator and Croaker
smashed the back of his biomechanical hand into his chest. Bennie
staggered back and the doors slid shut in his face.

Upstairs, Croaker
took a moment to allow the excess adrenaline to drain away. The
meeting with Bennie had been profoundly disturbing. What had happened
between them? It was as if they were talking at cross-purposes, each
of them locked in his own little world. Worse, at the heart of it all
was a terrible inarticulateness, as if they had nothing to
communicate but threats. Their time on the Captain Sumo,
only days ago, seemed like months, the camaraderie that had sprung up
between them an illusion. What if it was an illusion, he asked
himself, spun by Bennie to rope Croaker into this midnight run? What
the hell was so damn important about it?

Once, on a back
country fishing trip, Croaker had been bitten by a pygmy rattlesnake.
"I feel your tension,'' Stone Tree had said as he had
cut open the wound. "The toxin will be neutralized within
minutes. Why do you worry?" When Croaker had told him it
was because there were so many questions in life that had no answers,
Stone Tree had replied: "If you find this is so, you are
asking the wrong questions."

Before trying to find
Jenny Marsh, Croaker looked in on Rachel. Dr. Stansky stood beside
her bed, his hands clasped behind his back. He glanced up sharply as
Croaker came in, then nodded in cool recognition.

Croaker stooped to
kiss Rachel's forehead. It felt as if she were burning up, and he
experienced a quick stab of panic. "What's happened?"

Dr. Stansky's
Olympian ego was mollified by the anxiety in Croaker's tone. Here was
a human emotion with which he could deal. "There's no good news.
They're having trouble controlling the sepsis. No doubt Rachel's
severely weakened condition is a contributing factor." His voice
modulated, adding soothing overtones. "But the staff here is
doing everything they can." He pointed to two new IV tubes going
into her. "They've switched to more powerful antibiotics. It's a
waiting game now. That's why I urged Mrs. Duke to take a break. She'd
been here just about all day and her nerves were worn thin."
Then he noticed Croaker's condition. "You certainly look the
worse for wear."

Croaker grimaced. "I
fell off a truck."

"Everyone's a
comedian." He peered reprovingly from beneath humorless brows.
"Let me take a look at you." He unbuttoned Croaker's shirt
and began his examination. "Some nasty truck."

"Any luck
finding a kidney?" Croaker asked. Maybe he could still get off
the hook with Majeur and his despicable deal.

Dr. Stansky shook his
head as he snapped on latex gloves, then plucked several items off a
countertop. "I'm afraid it's useless." He used a tweezers
with curved tines to extract several small pebbles out of the reddish
abrasion on Croaker's right shoulder. "There's nothing I can do
for her, you see. Nothing at all." He applied a topical
disinfectant and an antibiotic cream to all the cuts and scrapes with
a gauze pad. "I've pulled in every favor, twisted every arm."
He dropped the soiled gauze into a disposal canister marked
danger-biohazard. "No one can help. I thought they'd be able to,
but they simply can't." He stripped off the gloves and threw
them after the gauze. "It's a matter of ethics, you see. These
medical people, these organ handlers, ethics is what defines them."
His gaze alit on Rachel's comatose face. "She's in God's hands
now, that's all there is to it."

Croaker thanked Dr.
Stansky and left the cubicle. He was dispirited, in pain and hungry.
It was only now he remembered that he hadn't eaten all day.

He saw Jenny Marsh
coming toward him from the lounge area where she'd first told him in
confidence about the American organ harvesting. The Bonitas'
activities lent a whole new aspect to it that made her input all the
more important.

He stopped in his
tracks. Dressed in black cotton pants and a sueded silk jacket over a
blue-green blouse she looked startlingly beautiful. Her catlike face
had touches of makeup on it, not much but enough to give her an
entirely new dimension. And what had she done to her hair? It hung
loose and full and gleaming so that it just touched her shoulders.

"Dr. Stansky
told me you're having a helluva time with my niece," he said as
he drank her in.

"Undoubtedly,"
Jenny frowned. "But I still find it odd. You'd think with the
course of treatment we're giving her, she'd be able to fight it off.
She's weak, but she isn't eighty years old." She shook her head.
"Still, it's there and it's killing her. If she's to have any
chance at all, we've got to have that kidney."

He held up the
documentation Majeur had given him. "Then I've got good news. I
hope."

As he moved into the
light, Jenny got a full look at the scrapes and bruises still
visible. "My God," she said, "what happened to you?"

He put a hand to his
jaw with its day's rough stubble and an ache still throbbing from the
punch Antonio had delivered. "I seem to be suffering from an
overexposure to the vicious undercurrents of life. Not to worry.
Stansky patched me up while he was talking down to me. With his
attitude, I'm surprised he didn't charge me." He handed over the
documents and said, "Jenny, I want you to tell me if this is
Rachel's ticket to life." Their gazes locked for a moment. "No
medical doubletalk, okay?"

She hesitated a
moment and he could see her considering what he was asking of her.
Doctors worked long and hard to gain the status of demigods. Asking
one to give up that privilege, even for a moment, required a leap of
trust for both parties.

At length, she
nodded. "I'll straight-shoot it, no matter the cost."

"I appreciate
that."

"You damn well
better." Her gaze dropped to the papers she held.

In a moment, she
said, "Lew, you aren't seriously considering using this
unregistered organ, are you?"

Jenny's words rode
harshly over his. "But the bottom line is you don't know where
this kidney's coming from."

He tapped the top
sheet of paper. "According to this, from the same place you or
anyone else gets organs: the United Network Organ Sharing."

"Right."
Some emotion was stuck in her eyes. What was it? "But, see, it
can't be because I've been through the UNOS national computer network
more times than I care to count, and I swear to you there's no kidney
to be had." She held up the papers. "I checked a couple of
hours ago, between operations. Updates don't happen that fast. This
kidney is unregistered. It's illegal."

Croaker felt a
weakness in the backs of his knees, and all the aches he'd amassed
during this gruelling day seemed to press in on him at once, "Christ,
Jenny, don't do this to Rachie. Earlier, you told me that in her case
you might consider using an unregistered kidney."

"A moment of
weakness—or madness." There was a confused look on her
face. "For her, for you, I don't know which." She shook her
head. "Now it doesn't matter, because I've regained the little
bit of sanity left me. I won't touch an unregistered kidney."

"Even to save
Rachel's life?"

"Yes," she
said evenly. "Even for that."

The tension between
them flickered and flared. Jenny was strong and she was principled.
That was good, but could she understand his predicament? This was not
her niece they were talking about.

This was not a girl
she had lost a long time ago, only by some miracle to have
rediscovered. This was not a second chance for her, a rare and
fragile opportunity to atone for past lapses. But it was for him. And
the thought that he might lose Rachel again—this time
forever—was intolerable.

"Lew, I know
you'd move heaven and earth for her," she said, proving him
wrong. "I can see it in every move you make around her. But,
listen to what I'm saying. If this kidney's unregistered you cannot
use it. If you do, you're not only condoning a sin so heinous it
cannot be named, you've become a part of it."

Her green eyes
sparked with the force of her will, and Croaker knew that they were
at an impasse. What happened when an irresistible force met an
immovable object?

The agony was he knew
she was right. He thought of Antonio and Heitor, the reavers,
harvesting organs as if they were mushrooms in the forest. He
couldn't be a party to that, but if there was even the slimmest hope
that the kidney Majeur was offering was as clean as the lawyer
claimed, Croaker had to play the string out to its end, even if the
end proved too bitter to bear. "But what if it is legit?"
he said. "Whistling in the dark, Lew."

To give in this much
cost her nothing in integrity and she led him over to a computer
terminal where she logged on. Surgeons and musicians had the same
kinds of fingers, Croaker thought, each one always moving
independently in their assigned tasks, as if they had ten hands
instead of two.

In sure, swift
strokes, Jenny typed in the codes to access the UNOS system in
Richmond, Virginia. Lit by the pixels of the screen, her face looked
eerie, like that of a fairy queen in a children's story or perhaps a
Shakespearean play. He knew she was on-line when she consulted the
documentation to get the serial number of Ma-jeur's kidney. She typed
it in and pressed the Enter key. A soft sigh escaped her lips.

"What is it?"
Croaker said. From his angle, the screen looked like little more than
a blur.

"It's
impossible," Jenny said as she turned toward him. "The
goddamn kidney's registered. It must have come on net while I was in
surgery. It's been reserved for Rachel."

Croaker felt the
thrill of elation race through him. "It's real," he
whispered. "It's real and it's legit." Out of utter
darkness had come a single beam, lighting his way. A path had
appeared, dangerous, lonely, and all too likely corrosive to his
soul. But for Rachel it was the blessed path back to life. "Thank
God."

Then he thought of
something. "Jenny, if the organ's already in the UNOS data bank,
let's see if we can get it released."

Jenny pressed some
keys. She shook her head. "No go. All I'm getting is an In
Transit message. It's not so unusual. The moment they get a donor's
consent, do the blood work up and antigens tests, the organ details
go on-line. They're meted out as to need, compatibility, and
geographical location, so we have to assume this donor's in the South
Florida area. But the kidney itself isn't ready yet."

Damn, Croaker
thought. He'd hoped he could outwit Majeur at his own game by getting
the organ without having to go through with his end of the deal. But
the UNOS system wasn't complying. Jenny shut down her computer and
leaned over the desk on ramrod straight arms. She closed her eyes,
and Croaker watched her profile, graceful and strong, limned against
the subdued night-lights of the Dialysis Unit.

Then she turned
around. "Lew, how did you work this miracle?" He spread the
fingers of his hands. "By definition, miracles aren't
explainable."

"Right. But
really. How did you do it?" He stared at her mutely.

Her emerald gaze
raked his face. "Okay. The clock's ticking. The sepsis will kill
her in a matter of days if we can't get it under control. And the
longer it remains unchecked the greater the odds we won't lick it.
Tell your donor's people I'll need some time to verify the antigen
findings on the documentation. In one way, we're lucky. Usually, I'd
have to do a kidney biopsy on Rachel's before the transplant, but in
this case we have to forego it. Her condition's too critical to
chance two operations. That's turned into a plus now because it'll
save time. The moment the organ is released, we go."

"Right,"
Croaker said. He felt his elation quickly replaced by a vivid sense
of a steel door slamming shut behind him. Now he'd have to call
Majeur and take his reprehensible deal. For Rachel's sake, he had to
have that organ. He was committed to terminating Juan Garcia
Barbacena, who would be within striking distance shortly after
midnight tomorrow. Surely, the devil had him by the throat. The
question was; would the devil ever let him go?

As in a dream or one
of Bennie's drug-induced altered states, he observed himself using
the phone on the desk to call Majeur's private number. He got the
lawyer's recorded voice and he left an urgent message, giving Majeur
his cell phone number. "I have to wait for the call back,"
he told Jenny. "Okay. Nothing more we can do here for the
moment." She put a hand to her midsection. "That was my
stomach begging for food. Now I'm begging you. Feed me. Please."

By the time they
pulled into the restaurant's parking lot, it was teeming. Not just
raining, but a tropical downpour that obscured even the far side of
the Intracoastal. In South Florida, you were never aware of raindrops
as discreet entities. Rather, rain was solid as walls, spit out of a
lowering sky.

Harbor Lights was
located just east of the Flagler Memorial Bridge. Geographically, it
was not far from Matty's place, but ideologically it was on the other
side of town, a rare haven for young people in the old money oasis of
Palm Beach. The restaurant was named for the Platters hit of 1960;
the music in the place came from that decade, which was cool again.
Croaker chose a spot in the far left-hand corner of the lot and
killed the engine. For some time, he sat looking at the rain-swept
parking lot as headlights swung across the sheened tarmac. People
hurried in and out of their cars, their backs hunched against the
storm.

"You seem very
far away just now." He could smell the light citrus fragrance
Jenny wore. "What is it you're seeing?"

Croaker stirred. It
felt strange and nice to have her beside him. "I was thinking of
all the promises I've made and kept. None of them seem as important
as the one I made to myself to keep Rachel safe from harm."

Inside, he shivered
in the sudden freeze of air-conditioning as a hostess who seemed all
browned legs and arms led them through the two-level, wood-trimmed
restaurant. Its open kitchen, stainless-steel glinting through gouts
of steam, was on his right, the thronged bar off to the left. The
Happenings were singing "See You in September," reminding
him of the hot summer nights of his youth and even hotter girls in
sleeveless blouses and tight capri pants. The smell of the steaming
city asphalt in August was like a perfume all the girls wore.

"Would you mind
if we sat outside?" Jenny asked. "I find that after surgery
I can't stand crowds. It's like my nerves are rubbed raw." To
his surprise, her beauty was undimmed by her exhaustion. On the
contrary, the slightly ragged edge of vulnerability heightened her
allure. "Too much proximity to human flesh and blood, I
suppose."

Croaker, whose head
ached fiercely, could empathize with her. "Suits me fine. I've
had it with air-conditioning." Outside, beneath an enormous blue
awning, they had the deck to themselves. The hostess lit candles for
them. The flames immediately flickered in the wind gusts, sending
shadows skittering nervously along the wall.

Jenny asked for a
Scotch and he ordered a club soda with two limes and a double
espresso from a dark-eyed young waitress. As he sank into the seat
beside Jenny, he noticed the green of her eyes was made translucent
in the candle-filled semidarkness.

The rain thrummed a
heavy tattoo against the fabric of the awning, threw up a fine spray
against the concrete of the dock. The waitress came with their drinks
and a couple of menus.

Croaker drank his
club soda in two long swallows, then turned his attention to the
espresso. "Now that the possibility has passed us by, I need to
know one thing," he said. "Do you have personal knowledge
of this illegal organ harvesting?"

Jenny seemed to study
him with the rapt attention she no doubt reserved for the opened-up
sites of her operations. "Has this become some kind of obsession
for you because of Rachel?"

"Because of
her," he admitted. "And other things."

Her voice was
peculiarly expressive. "Cop things, Detective?"

"You haven't
answered my question."

"No, I have no
personal knowledge of it. I've already told you how I feel about
illegal organ harvesting. It's anathema to me."

The waitress returned
to ask if they'd like to order. Jenny said she'd have a Tex-Mex
salad, grilled pompano, and a side of pasta; Croaker said he'd have
the same.

When they were alone
again, Croaker said, "And yet in that one moment earlier today
you were prepared to transplant a kidney no matter its source."

"I thought about
it, yes." Jenny sipped her Scotch. "I was reminded of
medical school." She looked at him over the rim of her glass.
"There were times there when I felt as if I were a novitiate in
a nunnery daydreaming of sex. My professors would discuss certain
protocols and I'd find myself questioning them. Is this right? Isn't
there another way? A better method?" Her front teeth chinked
softly against the glass. "These heretical thoughts surfaced
only at certain times, when the protocols being discussed were ones
for which no explanation was readily available. They just worked, no
one knew why. But all these protocols—for cancers, for
instance—had serious side effects for the patient. And I'd
think, Are we doing more harm than good? More often than not, the
patient was saved, that much was true. But he or she was
changed—weakened, damaged. Like sand through an hourglass, our
magic protocols had drained away years along with the disease."

A gust of wind moaned
through the dockside, fluttering the candle flames. A couple of
candles at nearby tables went out.

"All this came
back to me in that instant with you. The kidney.

I had another
heretical thought, but it's gone now. My life is restored to its
proper order."

Croaker tasted his
espresso, patient now that he saw what was happening. He sensed that
she'd told him the truth. Also, that her analogy about the novitiate
was on the mark. For her, medicine was like religion: it made sense
out of the unexplainable. It carved order out of chaos. Playing with
its rules, then, was, to use her own words, anathema, heretical,
because those rules were all that stood between her and the endless
night of eternity. In that regard, they were very much alike: both
sentinels on guard against evil.

With these thoughts
came a certain knowledge that some gulf that had separated them had
vanished, leaving them in startling and vulnerable proximity to one
another.

The downpour drummed
unceasingly on the awning and thunder rumbled ominously. A moment
later, lightning unstitched the darkness in a blue-white flash. A
brown pelican, disturbed out of slumber from its perch beneath the
bridge, flapped its wings, made a shallow arc across the
Intracoastal. Its long bill thrust forward, it glided through the
rain on a mission unknown.

Their food and the
call on Coaker's cell phone came all at once. As the dark-eyed
waitress set down their plates, Croaker went off into a corner
untouched by the fluttering candlelight. He was near the water, at
the edge of the blue awning. Rain spattered his shoulders, seeping
down the back of his neck.

In darkness, he did
the dirty deed and spoke to Marcellus Rojas Diego Majeur. The tiny
numbers on his cell phone glowed green, like phosphors on the ocean.
They seemed to squirm before his eyes like tiny evil eels about to
insinuate themselves beneath his skin.

He heard Majeur's
voice in his ear and he immediately felt invaded. He kept his eye on
Jenny, her face floating in soft light, as if the sight of her would
keep him safe from Majeur's spellcraft. This close to the final edge,
he felt a certain dread creeping through him. "It's a done
deal." Croaker's toes curled in hard reflex as the rain beaded
his shoe tips. "I'm all yours."

"Excellent,"
Majeur said. He seemed to have had no doubts the kidney he was
offering would pass muster. "All that remains is the transfer of
information on the subject." He meant Juan Garcia Barbacena, the
victim. He was being circumspect because he knew Croaker was on a
cell phone. "His schedule has not altered. Midnight tomorrow."

"Where?"
Croaker stole another glance at Jenny, willing a part of him to weld
itself to her. This he needed above all else so that when, as
inevitably would happen, he was stained by sin, he might hold out
hope of salvation through this link to her,

"Not over the
phone," Majeur said. ''But south, señor. It will
be south."

The Miami area. "I'll
need the kidney before then."

"Kiss him first
on the back of the neck and send him down." Majeur could not
deny himself a chuckle, perhaps at his clever turn of phrase. "Then
your niece will have what she requires."

Croaker wanted to
argue, but what with? He had no leverage. "I need the
information on our friend."

"We're compiling
the last of the details," Majeur told him. "He does
everything last minute—the security's better that way."

No,I need
to kill Juan Garcia Barbacena the first time going in, Croaker
thought. But what will be left of me when I'm finished? Will I be
able to live with myself?

"What if she
dies while I'm waiting for you to get your act together?"

"What if the sky
falls and we are all washed into the sea?" Croaker could hear
Majeur's even breathing on the other end of the line. "Have
faith, sir. We will come out the other side of this whole."

Where did a lawyer
like Majeur get faith like that? Croaker wondered. "Meet me at
ten-thirty this morning. That's as long as I'm prepared to wait,"
he said. "On the boardwalk in SoBe opposite the News Cafe."

"That's cutting
it close, but I can be there."

"Be sure you
are," Croaker said. "The clock's ticking and I need all the
time I can get."

Croaker pocketed the
phone as he walked back to the table.

"I had them take
our plates back," Jenny said. "The food would have gotten
cold." But there were questions, silent as fish, swimming in her
eyes.

He nodded in thanks
as he sat down. That small gesture of sending his food back with hers
felt like a tender kiss on the cheek. He tried to stop his mind from
racing. Whatever lay ahead for him didn't matter, he knew. It was
Rachel's life that needed saving. He could worry about his own later.

"Is everything
all right?" She could not keep the anxiety out of her voice. "We
are going to get the kidney?"

"As soon as I
pay for it."

"They want
money?"

Their food came. The
waitress asked if she could get them anything else and he said no,
thanks very much,

"That's all
right." Jenny took up slivers of her grilled pompano. "I
had no business asking."

Mist had sprung up
across the plucked skin of the water, drifting in soft tangles that
reminded him of a lover's hair spread across a rumpled pillowcase.

He looked at Jenny. A
fine net of droplets sparkled like diamonds in her wind-tousled hair,
and the candlelight shone in her eyes like the sun. He found himself
regretting that he'd set up this rendezvous to elicit her
professional advice. He liked her; more, he was attracted to her.

She very deftly
twirled some pasta on the tines of her fork. "See, while you
were on the phone I was thinking . . - The thing is, I'd like it to
be my business."

Antonio and Heitor
were summoned into his mind like genü, their amber eyes glowing
with cold passion. He said, "I don't think that's such a good
idea," He ate the fish without tasting it, uncomfortable with
the hurt look on her face. "The truth is I'd like it, too,
Jenny."

She tilted her head,
curious. "Well, then…?"

"I'm falling
down some kind of well, blind as a bat in sunlight, and I don't want
to take you with me."

"Even if I
choose to go?"

"That's not a
choice you can make. You don't have enough to go by."

"By all means."
She spread her hands. "You'll find I'm a very good listener."

He waved his fork.
"Forget it."

"Well, that's a
laugh. I finally get up the nerve to take a positive step and you
won't let me."

"Jenny—"

"No, no. I've
come this far. It's a matter of trust, isn't it? I want you to hear
this." There was an expression on her face that seemed to him to
be somewhere between sad and rueful. "As successful as I've been
professionally, I've managed to royally screw up my personal life. I
drove away my husband. At the time, he and I were both convinced it
was my overriding dedication to medicine that did us in." She
stared out at the rain-spattered night. "But, I know the truth
and it's quite a bit more bitter. He was a decent guy."

Thunder ruled the
sky. Across the Intracoastal, a fishing boat bounced and rolled at
its mooring, its decks white with rain.

Jenny shrugged. ''Who
knows, maybe, deep down, I don't think I deserve a decent guy. I
mean, look who I've picked since then. Dino, my last boyfriend, is
typical. Big, macho type. Drove a Ferrari, dressed real well. A real
hunk, proud of his sexual stamina. 'Jen, I'm gonna screw you'til you
scream.' He actually said that and, worse, I was actually intrigued."
She watched his expression, for disapproval perhaps. "So what
happened? We did it for ninety minutes straight. Instead of an
orgasm, he gave me a bladder infection."

They both laughed
quietly, almost politely, but the mood didn't last. Too much
electricity in the air.

He was silent for a
moment, and she went on in a softer tone. "You see how it is,
don't you? How I surprised myself by being attracted to you. Because
you're a decent guy. I knew it the moment we met. Then I saw you with
Rachel and it pierced my heart"

Though he couldn't
say how, he knew there was more she had to say. But she didn't go on.
Sometimes, as now, Croaker had come upon a moment with a woman when
some unspoken message passed through the air and hung suspended and
invisible, a kind of primitive recognition that stirred the cauldron
of the universe out of its set pattern. It was raw and sweaty, a
jungle thing, no doubt about it.

Jenny's breath caught
in her throat. "I'm not good at this," she whispered.
"Really, I'm not."

"It's comforting
to know that you're not good at something."

"I'm not good at
skiing, either," she said.

He took her hand as
he rose. "We're not going skiing."

Tim Buckley was
singing his sad songs of grace and dreamed encounters in a voice so
fragile it made you want to cry. Jenny had infused her apartment with
his music as if it were incense, and by this act alone Croaker knew
she was revealing a hitherto hidden part of herself.

For Croaker, one of
the most wonderful moments in life was when he first touched a woman
with intimate intent. The sense of anticipation, the perception of
what boundaries were about to flower open was so impassioned it made
his blood seethe.

They stood in the
middle of her living room, barefoot on a thick carpet of swirling
shapes and colors, hands moving on each other. She smelled of lemon
and sandalwood, and when her hair swung against his cheek, he could
feel it all the way down to his groin. "I love the way you
feel," he said softly.

She curled her head
against his shoulder. Then she did something quite extraordinary.
"Tell me how." she whispered in response. "Tell me
everything."

So he did. Every
place he touched her, he described. And her body quickened in
response, her thighs trembling, her breath rushing out of her in tiny
perfumed exhalations. With the forefinger of his right hand he
touched the side of her neck, feeling the triphammer pulse of blood,
then trailed it into the hollow of her throat, where another pulse
beckoned him, then down over the swell of a breast until he found her
nipple, swollen with desire. He described all of this into the whorl
of her ear and she clutched him tightly to her. She was turned on, he
suspected, not only because of the heightened sense of the sex it
gave her—the down and dirtiness of it—but because it gave
her tangible evidence that he was thinking of her, that
there was more to this for him than mere lust. There was nothing a
woman hated more than to be left alone by her partner during sex.

He put his arms lower
on her and she climbed him like a tree trunk, locking her ankles over
the top of his buttocks. The pains he'd received from beatings from
Antonio and the highway pavement receded into the background. He
pulled her to him, telling her how it made him feel. She shuddered
hard against him and began to tell him how he was making her feel.
She was hot and wet and open, and when he entered her there was no
resistance at all. With every move he made she spoke to him,
murmuring thrilling incantatory phrases that incited them both. She
came so fast it took him completely by surprise. And by the time he
had recovered, she was climbing that mountain again, shuddering and
moaning between her gasped-out narrative.

This was a Jenny
Marsh so far removed from the cool physician-surgeon commanding the
corridors of Royal Poinciana Hospital she might as well never have
been exposed to civilization. Who had seen Jenny Marsh like this
before him? Her husband? Perhaps. Not Dino, the stud, or any of her
other boyfriends. The moment held all the rare and breathless magic
of glimpsing a unicorn prancing in moonlight. In gasped-out delight,
she let go of everything she held rigid in her professional life.

He drove into her one
last time, throbbing uncontrollably as she urged him on with the
throaty sound of her voice, the scrape of her nails along his
sweat-ribboned flesh, the beat of her bare heels on the small of his
back.

Later, twined in her
bed in the darkness of the night, she turned her face to his. Lights
from outside filtered through the vertical blinds, figuring her face
with pale curls and crescents like aboriginal tattoos. Her eyes were
in deep shadow and he could not read her.

With extraordinary
delicacy, she traced the asymmetrical scrapes and bruises beneath
their gauze wrapping, as if she needed to assure herself of Dr.
Stansky's competence. "You have that faraway look in your eyes,"
she whispered. "Tell me what you're thinking."

It's a matter of
trust, isn't it? she had said. And she was right. Trust between
two people was all that mattered. If you could trust someone with
your heart, with the secret history of your life, then even if the
rest of the world went to hell it wouldn't matter so much. For what
he was committed to do now in order to save Rachel felt like a living
hell, and more than anything now he needed solace if not absolution.

He told her about
Antonio and Heitor, the hideous organ harvesting they'd brought to
South Florida, about Sonia and Vonda, and about Bennie and his
Guarani healer grandfather.

"Oh, Lew, tell
me this is some kind of terribly sick joke."

"Believe me, I
wish it was." He took out the soul-catcher stone. It gleamed
dully, its dark green turned to pitch black by the shadows.

"What's that?"

He held it between
the tips of his fingers. "Remember when Rachel woke up? Not only
woke from her coma but spoke rationally to me. Remember you said you
couldn't figure it, that there was no medical explanation?"

"Lew, in my
business there's often no medical explanation. That's something I
wouldn't admit to just anybody."

"This is what I
did just before she woke." He pressed the dark stone between her
bare breasts.

Staring down at it,
she shook her head. "I don't feel anything."

"Perhaps you
won't. But Rachel did."

Jenny sighed. "The
fact is cancers go into remission, patients recover when we've
privately given up on them. The human body is a miraculous engine of
life."

"This time it
had help."

He could hear her
breathing, feel her soft breath like puffs of air keeping a balloon
aloft over summer fields.

"Dear God!"

A sharply indrawn
breath. Her hands closed tightly over his where he held the
soul-catcher to her chest. Her eyes fluttered closed and he could see
her eyeballs beneath moving like someone dreaming.

Streetlight entered
the room as slowly as syrup. With each beat of his heart time seemed
to accumulate like gemstones at their feet.

Her eyes flew open
and in a voice hoarse with shock, she said, "I saw something."
She looked down at his hand pressed against her. "Take it away."
A violent shudder passed through her. "Please."

Croaker twisted, put
the dark stone on her bedside table. "What did you see?"

"What is it you
have to do to get this kidney?" Her voice was like a taloned
ghost, eviscerating the small pocket of serenity they had built to
insulate themselves against the outside world. He knew she had
struggled against asking this dreadful question, sensing that his
answer would be even more dreadful.

Holding her tight,
with her legs around him, the naked core of her fast against him, he
didn't answer her. He didn't have to; all too soon he could feel the
scald of her tears against his flesh.

"Lew, oh, my
God, oh, my God, I saw you. You were floating in the water. Shallow
water. Green and gold. You were facedown, one arm is gone, torn away
by—I don't know what. Floating into mangrove. Bump. Bump. Bump.
Against roots like the black legs of a great spider." Her
forehead burrowed into his shoulder. "And there was blood. So
much blood that none could be left inside you."

She didn't want to
let him go, but she was smart enough not to argue. He had promises to
keep and miles to go before he slept. Outside her building, he got
into the T-bird. The storm had ended as abruptly as it had begun,
leaving the air humid and still and smelling of jasmine, decomposing
leaves, and loamy earth. An almost full moon rode low in the sky,
dulled to burnished copper. The tree frogs' insistent song shrilled
the darkness.

He remembered when
his father died, shot down in an alley not three blocks from home.
He'd relived the moment when he'd been called to the scene over and
over as if it were an endless loop. He couldn't think of his father
in any other way than the man, suddenly old, crumpled, lifeless. It
was as if he'd lost his father and all his memories of their
life together. Until his father's cop buddies took him out drinking
after the funeral. There, half-drunk, he'd absorbed their stories
about his father—funny, sad, prideful, embarrassing—but
always intimate. And in that way he'd regained his inner balance.
Gradually, his father came back to him and he'd felt restored.

Now he thought about
Sonia. His intimacy with Jenny had somehow freed him from the
nightmare of constantly reliving the moment when he had pulled open
her refrigerator door. At last, he could remember her as she should
be remembered, her strong lithe body in his arms as they merengued
across the Shark Bar's dance floor.

He drove to an
all-night gas station. It was lonely, the quiet broken only by the
buzzing of the moths and the faint sound of a plaintive country and
western song coming from inside the central kiosk. Everything was
automated; he didn't have to contact another human soul. That was all
right by him. Just now, he felt as Jenny had after her hours in
surgery. The oblivion of apartness was all he craved. Like Stone Tree
in his comfortable shack in the Everglades.

While the tank was
being filled, he tried not to think of the vision the spirit-stone
had showed her. Bump. Bump. Bump. His own death. With a
convulsive gesture, he inserted the floppy disk he'd pulled from
Vonda's jaws into his notebook computer. The data had been partially
corrupted by saliva, blood, glue, dust, who knew what else. The
computer balked but he persisted.

Then his screen was
filled with lines of data. Apparently the data had been encrypted,
because every so often a gibberish word would appear in the text.
What he read sent a chill through his veins.

Here, laid out in
admittedly incomplete form, was documentation of a secret life, lived
in the shadows carefully constructed by Uncle Sam. According to the
spotty data, there was a high-level official running a top-secret
operation within Croaker's own Anti-Cartel Task Force. There was a
stern warning that all personnel working for something called DICTRIB
were to be denied access to this data. DICTRIB, Croaker discovered
several pages farther on, was the acronym for the Developing Capital
Countries Trade Relations Bureau, secreted away within the U.S.
Department of State.

The data showed vast
sums of money being moved from the States down to various places in
Latin America. Embedded in this data, however, was a frightening
nugget: the fund transfers had only destination codes. The State
Department was quite fussy about paperwork. All departmental
requisition and transfer authorizations were required to have both
origin and destination codes in order to be logged in with the
dreadful dragons at Finance and Bookkeeping, who were wont to
penny-pinch you to death. These ACTF transfers lacked origin codes.

That could mean only
one thing: this operation was black-budgeted. Black-budget, a term
Croaker had learned in his time with the ACTF, meant the operation
was funded without the consent or even knowledge of Congress. In
effect, it didn't exist. Black-

budgets were deemed
necessary by the bureaucrats because, sometimes, covert operations or
even entire divisions were deemed necessary—even vital—to
powerful interests, even though their methods would never pass muster
on Capitol Hill.

For security reasons,
the major players in black-budget operations always used pseudonyms
on documentation, whether electronic or hard copy. Often, these
pseudonyms had secret meanings known only to those who chose them.
This one was using the name Sero.

With a sense of
mounting horror, Croaker recalled Estrella Leyes telling him about
the special relationship between Bennie and his grandfather: Humaità
had a secret name for Bennie he always used when they were together.
Sero, he called him. Sero, the mountain.

Here was a secret so
foul it sent Croaker's head spinning. Could it be? Could Bennie
Milagros be working for the Feds? Was that why he was so vague and
secretive about his business dealings?

And what was Sero
doing?

On his computer
screen, Croaker saw evidence mounting. Not only of movements of cash,
but of weapons, tactical command cadres, and strategic deployments of
ACTF personnel throughout Latin America. All sanctioned and directed
by Sero. By Bennie? Just what in the hell was he up to? Each time
Croaker encountered a destination code, he pulled up more evidence of
this highly detailed and carefully considered network. So much so, in
fact, that at some point he realized that he was looking at the prep
work for what must be the final phase of the operation. What the hell
was going on down there? With the buildup of agents and arms, it
looked like a hot war brewing, so far along that it could boil over
at any minute.

And then he came upon
one last bit of data. It was partially corrupted—so much so
that it resisted all his attempts to copy it onto his hard drive. It
showed evidence that Sero was running Juan Garcia Barbacena.
Barbacena was Sero's chief agent and informant in the field.

The pain of betrayal
was so severe Croaker almost doubled over. Now he knew why that
secretive midnight run was so vitally important to Bennie. He was
going to meet Barbacena. He needed to find a means of transportation
that was totally secure. What better way than with a private charter
boat, captained by a friend? That way, only two people knew of the
arrangements before he gave them to Barbacena: Bennie and Croaker.

So this is what his
friendship with Bennie had been reduced to: it was nothing more than
a ruse to get Barbacena into the country under a security blackout.

Croaker pushed on
with his work and was able to salvage two partial invoices detailing
shipments of what were designated medical supplies. But when he saw
the six-digit numeric of place of loading—where the supposed
medical supplies came from—his blood ran cold. He knew that
code from his dealings with the ACTF. It was the Federal Arsenal in
Arlington.

Sero wasn't sending
Barbacena medical supplies; he was sending him government war
materiel.

Croaker sat in the
T-bird, stunned into immobility. This was a Bennie that Croaker did
not know and could barely imagine. And yet, this was the way it was
with the best of the masters. They created personas so perfectly
realized it was impossible to imagine them any other way. Croaker ran
a hand across burning eyes. He felt as if he was having a nightmare
of a disaster happening he was powerless to stop—only to wake
up to discover that reality was the real nightmare.

Of course, the
thought immediately occurred to him that it was the Bonitas who had
left this modern-day artifact for him to find. He pulled out the
floppy, stared bleakly at the brief, ironic note:

LOOKING FOR THIS,
DETECTIVE?

Considering the
source, the data had to be viewed with a certain degree of
skepticism. Could be the Bonitas were trying to put Bennie in a
frame. They certainly hated him enough. But it defied logic. How the
hell could they have gotten access to a restricted government
database?

But there was more
evidence that Bennie's life was a lie. According to the Bell South
records, he was paying for Majeur's private line. Was he Majeur's
mysterious client? But if he was running Barbacena, why would he want
his own agent killed?

That led Croaker back
to Antonio and Heitor. They knew of Croaker, knew he was a detective.
They also knew he'd seen Sonia. Antonio's first question to him rang
in his mind: You the boyfriend? The Bonitas must know he and
Bennie were friends. A sudden chill swept through him. How much more
did they know about him? Was Rachel now in jeopardy from them? Was
Jenny? His scalp began to crawl.

Majeur was not who he
said he was, and now, it seemed, neither was Bennie.

Who was lying and who
was telling the truth? Who presented more danger: the Bonitas or
Bennie? At this moment, Croaker had to admit he didn't know. But he
was sure going to find out. Until he did, he was like a man with a
highly infectious disease, passing on deadly danger to everyone with
whom he came in contact.

He got slowly out of
the car and, walking through a battery of moths fluttering in the
bright lights, returned the gas pump nozzle to its bay, closed the
gas cap on the T-bird, and got his credit card receipt.

All of a sudden he
got a flash of the Bonita brothers in his face as he clung to the
back of their panel truck. "Not now… not yet …"
Antonio had said, staying Heitor's hand. What did that mean? And why
had Antonio allowed him to escape?

Back in the T-bird,
he stared at the computer screen. He was at the end of the list of
ACTF destination codes. He was about to close down the file when he
noticed that the ribbon bar on the left side of the screen showed
that he was not, in fact, at the end of the file. He hit the Home key
twice, then the Down Arrow key. There, at the very end of the file,
were embeds—symbols within seemingly innocuous text. You'd have
to be looking for them, to notice they were screen prompts. He called
them up and discovered three more destination codes. These, however,
had a different prefix than the others. He cleared the screen,
punched in the codes. The screen went black. He could see his modem
being activated. Then the screen bloomed with color. He was
interfacing with the DICTRIB net. Immediately, a security block
popped up. All he could think of was to type in his ACTF temporary
I.D.

The software accepted
it. He entered the DICTRIB requisition codes and pressed Enter. The
screen was wiped clear of data, replaced by an ominous message:

Who the hell was Ross
Darling? Croaker thought. And what the hell was DICTRIB? He worked
the keyboard, trying to get an answer, but he was effectively
blocked. Worse, when he relogged onto the ACTF net, he got nothing
but a blank screen. His temporary access code had been revoked.
Something he'd done had woken the hydra.

DAY
FOUR

1

I he spine of South
Beach consisted of three main north-south thoroughfares—Ocean
Drive, Washington and Collins Avenue—as they ran from First to
Eighteenth Streets. But those boundaries were, of necessity, fluid;
each week, it seemed, South Beach was expanding northward and
westward.

South Beach had been
in a state of decline for so long, residents still seemed shinned by
its recent revival. Built in the Art Deco and Moderne styles in the
1930s and 1940s, it had been through the Great Depression when you
could get a room at a near-deserted hotel for five dollars a week.
Through the 1950s and 1960s it was part of the safe haven for
retirees, mainly Jews from New York's garment and dry goods unions
shops.

In the late 1970s and
early 1980s, the run-down historic buildings attracted speculators
with more money than expertise, and again, many people lost money.
But only a few crucial years later, by the end of the decade, an
influx of European designers, models, and photographers took quick
advantage of the bargain-basement prices. They were intrigued by the
kitschy architecture and wild Deco colors, but, Croaker suspected,
their interest had more to do with resurrecting old-time Hollywood
glamour than it did with a renascence of a bygone period of history.

It was just past
midnight when Croaker parked the T-bird near the Madonna Club. Less
than twenty-four hours until Juan Garcia Barbacena landed in South
Florida and became Croaker's prey.

Photos of the lap
dancers to be hired inside the club were sheened with colored neon,
lending them an unreal edge. The retouched glamour of the
photos—artificial and flavorless—served to remind him of
Vonda's empty life. Like Sonia, all she'd needed was a chance at life
she was not now going to get. Passing a cigar store with salsa music,
raw and sweaty, blaring from its interior, his thoughts strayed to
Bennie, and then the sick feeling in his stomach surfaced all over
again.

He found the
Lightning Tube without difficulty. This was the place Gideon's band
ManMan was playing. Who was Gideon? Rachel's boyfriend. Her drug
connection. All too likely both.

The Lightning Tube
had blacked-out windows just like the Margate Gun & Racquet Club.
He went around the corner, saw that the club extended all the way
back to a narrow alley filled with green Dumpsters and a thin tabby
cat that stared at him with eyes like marbles. Above the back door
was a security light that buzzed like a nest of angry hornets. In the
dirty stucco wall were two filthy windows. He looked in one, saw a
urinal and a sink. On the opposite side of the alley was a metal
security door bolted and padlocked. There were no windows in this
building. He turned around and went back to the front entrance.

Inside, it looked
like a garage—concrete floor and walls, a trio of old gasoline
pumps from the 1950s. Blowups of pin-up calendar pages from that
decade were projected on the ceiling. Steel catwalks crisscrossed the
bilevel space. A bar, constructed out of iron and aqua-tinted fused
glass, was the current center of activity. Cool cats in polyester
sleeveless shirts and shiny slacks rubbed shoulders with
model-wannabes with big lips and bigger busts.

A large-screen TV
hanging from the ceiling was showing an episode of The Patty Duke
Show, the great one where she played identical cousins. The
sound was off, high-decibel rock music providing a bizarre
soundtrack.

Beyond, on the raised
dance floor, ManMan was setting up.

Croaker ordered two
bottles of Blackened Voodoo, a New Orleans beer with a definite kick.
He watched the graceless moves the cool cats were putting on the hot
babes. He understood; at their age, he'd done no better. Maybe the
only real difference between him and them was that he was a little
less scared stiff by life.

Croaker, bottles in
hand, strolled over to the band setup, approaching a guitarist.

"Beer?" he
said.

She turned. "Do
I know you?"

Croaker couldn't help
staring. The irises of her eyes were as yellow as a New York City
taxi, and the pupils were pitch black vertical crescents. She looked
like something out of Cat People.

He shoved a bottle
into her fist. "You do now."

She grinned, showing
a silver blob piercing the center of her tongue. "Here. Take a
real good look." She stuck the tongue out at him. The
blob resolved itself into a tiny sculpted skull. She laughed and
downed half the Blackened Voodoo in one ravenous swallow.

"I'm looking for
Gideon."

She had a wide,
almost pouty mouth, a strong, assertive nose, and glossy blonde hair.
In another incarnation she might have been a college homecoming
queen. But she wouldn't have been half as interesting.

She smacked her lips.
"Gideon isn't here."

She was dressed in a
black lace top and silver Lurex skirt so short the lower curve of her
buttocks was visible beneath black tights. She wore four black
leather belts with assorted studs, one on top of another, an armful
of jangling Third World bracelets, and plain black ankle-high boots
with chunky Cuban heels.

"You a fan, a
groupie, or just looking to get laid?"

"That's some
bad-ass attitude you've got there," he said, staring at her.
Something about her seemed familiar. Could they have met before?

"Stay awhile;
you'll get a load of what crawls through the door."

"I'd just like a
word with Gideon."

She finished her
beer. "Okay. You said that. So how come?"

"It's a personal
matter."

She shoved the empty
bottle on top of an amp and snickered. "Yeah, right. They all
say that."

Her guitar was one of
those solid-body electric instruments, fireball red with black roses
on front and back. She slung it on her hip like a cowboy's six-gun.
"This isn't about Gideon," she said. "It's about you."
She leaned in, gave him a disdainful sniff. "You stink, man.
Like you're strapped." She lifted an eyebrow. "Are you?
Carrying a gun in that manly armpit?"

Once, as a boy, he
had peered inside a burnt-out light switch only to discover the naked
end of a loose wire glowing whitely. That hot aura had held him
transfixed. He had wondered what would have happened to him had he
stuck his finger inside without looking first. This girl reminded him
of that light switch: a brittle plastic exterior concealing a
white-hot current that could shock.

He lifted his arms.
"I'm weaponless."

She rested her arms
loosely on the top of her guitar. He noticed that they were well
muscled. "Except for that Terminator hand of yours."

He dug out the photo
of Rachel his sister had given him, held it in front of the
guitarist's face. "You recognize her?"

"No."

But she was lying;
Croaker was sure of it. It was a popular mis- conception that the
eyes were an accurate monitor of truth, lies, imminent action. Forget
the eyes, Croaker's father had taught him; look to the tiny muscles
on either side of the mouth. These were the places where secrets were
given up. "Her name's Rachel Duke. She and Gideon have a thing
going, right?"

"You say you're
not a cop, but I say you're a lying geek."

"Actually, I'm
Rachel's uncle."

She fingered the
strings of her guitar with studied nonchalance, but something in her
expression had changed. Maybe she was Gideon's old girlfriend,
jealous of Rachel. That's how things usually went in these bands.
Whatever, he knew he had to press his advantage.

"I saw Rachel
yesterday," he said. "In the hospital. She's dying."

For the first time
she faltered. "Rachel's dying?" Slowly, deliberately she
took off the electric guitar.

"You knew she
was in the hospital, didn't you?"

"I was with her
the night she freaked." Those eerie cat's eyes seemed to glow.
"I'm Gideon."

"You're
Gideon?" Croaker could not help staring at the peaked breasts
that protruded saucily from beneath her black lace top. One thing for
sure, he thought in that stunned instant, Gideon was nobody's
boyfriend, least of all Rachel's.

A look of disgust
crossed Gideon's face. "Fuck you. I knew you'd have that
reaction."

Now he recognized
her. Put a black wig on her head, dress her up in a see-through vinyl
raincoat, and she was the model in the photo in Rachel's room. A
sudden rage burned within him. He became aware that with each passing
moment the one-ounce bag of coke in his pocket seemed heavier and
heavier, until now it had become an insupportable weight. Something
inside him egged him on—some spiteful piece so furious at
Rachel's helpless situation, the hellish moral box he was in, his own
bad assessment of Bennie, at the murders of Sonia and Vonda so close
at hand they were like nerves rubbed raw. And now this—confronting
his niece's lover, who just happened to be a lesbian feeding Rachel
all kinds of drugs. He was unsure whether he wanted to interrogate
her or murder her.

He slapped the
plastic bag on the black top of the bank of amps, flipped open his
federal I.D. and said, "Hey, pal, you're busted."

Gideon's gaze never
touched the bag of coke. "What's this shit?"

"Something I
found stitched into the lining of Rachel's leather jacket,"
Croaker said. "You know, the one with 'ManMan' printed on it."

"What were you
doing in her closet? Gawking?"

"Looking for her
diary."

Gideon pointed the
guitar's neck at the bag of coke. "Hey, that shit's got nothing
to do with me."

"It's got
everything to do with you. You sold it to Rachel, didn't you?"

"I never sold
her anything." Gideon's eyes glittered fiercely. Then she put
aside her guitar. "Excuse me, I have to go pee."

Croaker watched her
make her way through the dancing throng to the toilets in the back of
the club. He moved after her. As soon as he saw her disappear into
the ladies' room, he went through the kitchen to the rear door. He
pushed through it into the Dumpster-filled alley.

He was just in time
to see her slim body sliding legs first out the window of the ladies'
room. He made enough sound to scare the tabby cat. Gideon, landing in
a semicrouch, whirled toward him.

He could see her
face, painted in yellow and black by the security light, like jungle
camouflage. Her cat's eyes burned in the darkness as she backed up
against the filthy wall.

He could feel the
coiled tension sparking off her skin. What was she beneath her tribal
paraphernalia? She was like some throwback creature, instincts honed
to jungle pitch. If she wasn't quite feral, she wasn't domesticated
either.

She almost spat out
her words. "I do drugs. I make no bones about it. But I don't
sell."

"Not here,"
he said and, taking her by the elbow, led her out of the alley and
down Washington to the T-bird. He opened the door for her and they
got in.

"Okay." He
nodded. "You and Rachel did drugs together."

"Lots of other
things, too." That defiant look was back on her face.

"But you
provided the dope."

She nodded. "I
drummed that one into her head. It was either me or some sleazebag
out to rip her off. Too much evil karma floating around."

"Gideon, she
O.D.'d on bad shit. And because of her drug dependency she may very
well die."

"Look, I…
Christ, Rachel's got an addictive personality. But I personally
scoped out all the stuff we did."

"This time you
fucked up."

She pointed a
forefinger at him. "You've still got that attitude, don't you?"

"What attitude?"

"The 'You
corrupted my pure little innocent niece' attitude!"

They sat, glowering
at each other from a close proximity that rankled them both. We're
like wild dogs going at it, he thought in despair. What's
wrong with us?

And then he
understood what was happening. They were battling over the same bit
of territory: Rachel.

"Listen, Gideon,
I care for Rachel. I know you do, too. I'm sure you want to help
her."

She shook her head.
"You have no idea what I want."

"I assume what
drives you are the same emotions that touch everyone." It was
the wrong thing to say. He knew it even before he'd finished the
sentence.

Gideon made the harsh
sound of a buzzer. "Brrrup! Wrong, uncle cop." Her
voice had taken on the slightly condescending lilt of a game show
host. "And now you've run out of questions to ask the freak.
You're time's up and you've flamed out. We must ask you to get the
hell out of our face."

"Gideon, I need
your help. I know somewhere Rachel must have a diary. I went through
her room and couldn't find it."

In another act of
defiance, she reached out and turned on the cassette tape machine.
"What're we gonna have here," she sneered, "Barry
Manilow?" But her expression changed when she heard Nancy
Sinatra singing "These Boots Are Made for Walking."

She gave him a quick
look, then opened the glove box. Out tumbled a wall of cassettes: The
Everly Brothers, Jan & Dean, Irma Thomas, Lesley Gore, the whole
works. Gideon sifted through this veritable history of 1960s pop
music as if she were in a treasure trove.

Suddenly she looked
at him. And when she spoke, there was a new note in her voice: "You
into this music—really?" A hint of conciliation.

"It's a
passion."

"Yeah. With me,
too." Her head bobbed up and down. "A-fucking-mazing."

The curious and
thorny exterior was now dissolving, revealing the true creature
beneath. In that moment, his anger was broken like moonlight on
water. "For what it's worth, Gideon, I don't think you're a
freak."

"Christ, I wish
I could believe that."

"You can."

She looked down at
the cassettes, turning them over one by one. At last, she said, "I
hope so. We both belong to Rachel."

So she had felt it,
too, that ferocious animal's imperative over territory.

"Then why did
you run away from me?"

"'Hey, pal,
you're busted." She mimicked his voice with uncanny accuracy. "I
saw the look on your face. I was indicted, tried, and sentenced all
within the space of a heartbeat. Right then, you weren't ready to
listen to anything—especially what I had to tell you."

He said nothing
because she was right. He had been ready, willing, and able to
condemn her out of hand. The late nights, the coke, the adrenaline
rushes, the kinky sex. The whole sleazy picture had formed in his
mind and he knew why. It was because of what she was. He felt the
small bulge of the red rubber ball with the silk cords at the bottom
of his pocket. She was dead on. In his mind, she'd corrupted Rachel.

"I made a
mistake with you," he said. "I won't do it again."

"Is that so?"
But her tone was less defiant. She'd gone through that phase, made
her stand—and her point. Now a cautious note of curiosity had
crept in.

She bent her head
down, put her thumb and forefinger into each eye. When she lifted her
head, the bizarre cat's eyes were lying on the tips of her fingers.
They were contact lenses. Her own eyes were china blue. As she put
the lenses away in a plastic case, her eyes lost focus for a moment.
He would have given just about anything to know what she was
thinking.

"You were right
about Rachel. She does have a diary." She looked at him from the
side. "Did you happen to see the sachet in her dresser drawer?"

"Sure. It
smelled of lilac."

"So does her
diary."

She stuffed it inside
the sachet, Croaker thought. An ingenious hiding place for a girl
with secrets and an inquisitive mother. "Thanks," he said.

Gideon seemed not to
have heard him. "Older people have this thing." She stacked
the cassettes back in the glove box. "They think it's the wisdom
of years that makes their flesh hang from their bones like crepe
paper." She looked at him. "Well, here's something for you
to chew over. Rachel O.D.'d, but it sure as hell wasn't because the
drugs were bad. I was doing the same shit that she was—all
fucking night long. That I guarantee a hundred percent. Got
it?"

Croaker thought about
the implications of what Gideon had just told him. He knew he needed
to speak to Jenny Marsh as soon as possible. Why had Rachel O.D.'d
and not Gideon?

"That night,"
he said softly, "did Rachel do a lot of drugs?"

"Yeah."

"What kind?"

Cars hissed by. The
Nancy Sinatra tape had finished playing, but neither of them made a
move to replace it.

"Early in the
evening we dropped some acid. We smoked maybe a couple of joints over
dinner. Then, later, when we were at the club, we both did coke."

"I'm sorry."
Gideon put her head back against the leather seat. "You can't
possibly know how sorry." Tears were glittering in her eyes. "I
don't want anything to happen to her."

"I know."
This was not a young woman you could easily take in your arms to
console. So he did the next best thing; he changed the subject "What
club?"

She wiped her eyes
with a forefinger. "What?"

"You said you
were at a club that night. Which one?"

"The Boneyard,
up here on Lincoln Road. It's a coffee bar in front. In back, it's
got this Internet virtual sex thing. Rachel liked to hook up there a
lot."

"You didn't?"

Gideon gave him a
dark and unnatural look. "I indulged her."

That remark sank into
his consciousness like a fishing lure into deep water.

"Here's the
thing," he said. "I need you to tell me about Rachel."
He took out the red rubber ball. Its black silk strings fluttered
down. "You know what this is." It lay in his hand like an
evil eye, plucked from a skull.

"It's a ball
gag. S-M shit."

"I found it at
the bottom of Rachel's closet. Did you and she—?"

Gideon shook her
head. "Not my thing. Not our thing."

In her face he saw
the truth form like an air bubble rising to the surface of a lake.
Croaker took a deep breath, let it all go. "Was she seeing
someone else?"

Croaker held still.
Because it seemed to have triggered a response, he didn't want her to
lose sight of the ball gag.

"But what?"

"You know
everyone's got buttons. You push 'em and wham!, they go off like
fireworks. The question of whether she was seeing someone else was
one of Rachel's." Gideon put her hands together almost as if she
were praying. "I told you that she had an addictive personality.
That didn't begin and end with drugs."

"What did it
begin with?" he asked softly.

"Sex."
Gideon shook her head. "See, for me sex is very straightforward,
always has been. But for Rachel—" She spread her hands. "I
don't know, it seemed like she was all tied up in knots about it."
She interlaced her fingers tightly. "It was almost like pleasure
and guilt were mixed up together, as if she couldn't feel one without
the other."

"Which role is
she into?" He rolled the red ball around his fingertips.
"Dominant or submissive?"

"I don't know.
With me, she's neither. We trade off, depending on our moods."
She pushed her hair off the side of her face.

"Do you have any
idea who else she was seeing?"

"Uh-uh."

He said, "She
found someone to do the S-M thing with."

Gideon nodded.
"That's my guess."

"Man or woman?"

"I'd say a man.
Definitely."

"No suspicions
who?"

"Uh-uh."

Croaker continued to
roll the ball. "She must have given you clues. People always do,
whether they're aware of it or not."

"You'd have to
be a psychic to pick up on them," she said. "I mean, the
only male I'm aware she's seen has been Ronald what's-his-name. Her
doctor."

"Stansky?"

"That's the
guy."

"I know about
that. My sister said she took Rachel to see him six months ago. That
was for Rachel's annual school exam. But you couldn't have been with
her all the time. You have your band—you must've been on the
road. She could've seen anybody then and you'd never know unless she
told you."

Something had come
into Gideon's body. A tension that was so pronounced Croaker could
feel its reflection, like midday sunlight off pavement. "What is
it?"

"Because during
that time Rachel saw Dr. Stansky maybe half a dozen times."

"What for?"

Gideon shrugged.
"Insomnia. Problems with her period. A sinus infection. Anemia.
That sort of thing." She saw the look on his face and responded
to it. "But there couldn't have been anything more to it."

"How do you know
that?"

"Cause I drove
Rachel every time she went."

"Wait a minute,"
Croaker said. "What did Rachel need you to drive her for? She
could've biked over. Stansky's office is in Palm Beach, not far from
where she lives."

Something began to
click in his mind. It was the sound of a sinister engine running in
absolute darkness.

Croaker held up the
obscene red rubber ball with its silk cords. "I wonder if Dr.
Ronald Stansky knows what a ball gag is."

Gideon gazed at it as
if it were a dark star. She tapped its curve with a fingertip. "I
wonder if the damn thing's his."

Croaker saw her back
to the club, then returned to the T-bird.

"I want to see
Rachel," Gideon had told him just before he'd left her, "but
I don't want to be there with Matty. Rachel doesn't want her to know
about us and I don't want to be the one to break it to her."

"Don't worry.
She'll think you're just a friend."

"No she won't,"
Gideon told him. "I'm not just a friend and I won't lie."

Croaker knew enough
about her to believe that, so he told her when Matty was least likely
to be at the hospital.

He turned the
ignition and gunned the engine. It seemed to him curious that he now
thought that Rachel was in some ways lucky to have met Gideon. He
pulled out in time to touch off the air horn of a semi rolling up
Washington right behind him. He sounded his own horn, but the semi
wasn't slowing. Its driver seemed confident in his truck's
overwhelming size.

Croaker thought, The
hell with it, and stepped on the gas. The turquoise T-bird shot
out into the avenue. In the periphery of his vision, he was aware of
the huge chrome grille of the semi filling the rearview mirror. It
seemed to overflow it. The driver of the semi, startled out of his
cockiness, slammed on his brakes as Croaker roared off.

By the time he had
made a left onto Tenth Street, he had a sense he was being followed.
A white BMW sedan with heavily smoked windows. To make sure, Croaker
made a sudden left onto Pennsylvania with the T-bird's custom engine
roaring. The white BMW accelerated into the turn, rocking on its
shocks.

Croaker could see the
Miami area laid out in front of him as if on a lighted grid. Miami
Beach was one of what was essentially a chain of islands separated
from the mainland by the Intracoastal Waterway and Biscayne Bay. It
was connected to Miami by a series of causeways. Because South Beach
was on the extreme southern end, going south from here was a dead end
unless you were going to take the MacArthur Causeway, that linked
Fifth Street here with Thirteenth Street in Miami.

That was going to be
his immediate destination.

Guessing right, the
white BMW made up some time and was close on his tail as he wove in
and out of the slow-moving traffic on the causeway. It was
interesting—and ominous—that the BMW was not interested
in hiding its intent. They flew past Star Island on the right, then
Palm and Hibiscus Islands, small, exclusive enclaves of houses, each
with their own boat slips amid the palm trees and massive Florida
rooms giving out onto magnificent million-dollar views of the bay.
There was enough money afloat on that small part of the bay to
satisfy even the most grandiose ego.

Despite his best
efforts, Croaker could not pull away. Flat out, the T-bird's
425-horsepower engine could out-torque the BMW, but when it came to
maneuvering between cars the BMW's streamlined shape and superior
cornering had a distinct advantage.

All at once they were
into another world entirely: downtown Miami, stark and modern,
anonymous-looking big businesses vying with tacky tourist shops.
Traffic dried up like drizzle in tropical sunlight. When there was a
choice, Croaker had been careful each time to take the obvious one.
He wanted to make it easy for the driver of the BMW to get so
comfortable with them he'd begin to unconsciously anticipate them.

It was the same
technique by which you controlled a suspect in an interrogation. You
revealed little bits of yourself until he was under the
misapprehension that he was in control. That was okay. Your first job
was to get him to be in synch with you. Then when you pulled away
this security, he was yours.

The T-bird
crisscrossed shadows. For moments at a time it was lost to the BMW
until the driver caught on and switched his atten- tion from the
silhouette of the T-bird to the twin beams of its headlights, which
told him not only where Croaker was but where he was headed.

The sidewalks were as
deserted as if a neutron bomb had been detonated. Even the hustlers
and streetwalkers had migrated with the tourists and the kids south
to Coconut Grove. Blue-white light bounced off high-rises' reflective
windows, but in between, the darkness had the stifling
impenetrability of the jungle.

Croaker headed south
again, along the very end of Biscayne Boulevard. Soon he would run
out of road. At First Street, he cut over to S.E. Second Avenue.
Still heading south.

They were alone on
the street, arrowing through the unquiet urban night.

Into the city smell
of hot, sooty concrete, seeping diesel fumes and stripped rubber
tires came another scent: water, slow-moving as sludge.

They were approaching
the Miami River, and Croaker's scalp began to itch.

As the driver of the
BMW read his moves and reacted to them, as Croaker then responded to
the BMW's counters, a kind of invisible cord had sprung up between
them. Like knife-wielding adversaries bound by a short length of
rope, they had traversed the city without having lost or gained
ground. Their arena was still the space between the T-bird and the
BMW.

Now that was about to
change.

Up ahead, he could
see it, a large hulking presence, part massive steel stanchions, part
poured concrete. In the streetlight-studded darkness, it looked like
the skeleton of a saurian rising from its tar pit deathbed.

It was the new
Brickell Avenue Bridge, and he was headed right for it.

The bridge had been
under construction for over a year now, its concrete underbed only
half complete. The rest of the span was bare metal girders. The
approach road was closed off and barricaded with wooden sawhorses,
banks of blinking amber lights, and a mobile electronic message board
that warned: road closed. danger!

You bet.

As he approached, he
could make out the forms of cranes, bulldozers, piles of steel
piping, iron girders, wooden scaffoldings, bags of cement powder. He
was heading straight for the unfinished bridge. It was there in the
close shadows that he would engage the BMW. If he didn't plunge at
top speed into the river.

Croaker extinguished
his headlights. Then he jerked the wheel over hard to the left,
pushing the T-bird into a lane that would have been filled with
oncoming traffic had it been hours earlier. With a screech of tires,
he floored the car, pouring all the horsepower under the hood into a
single fireball shot that would bring him through the barriers, onto
the unfinished bridge.

He had baited his
pursuer with those beams, hiding in the shadows so the driver would
be forced to fix his attention on them in order to follow the T-bird.
Just when the driver had become used to its beacon lights, he'd
switched them off.

On the unfinished
span, he drove the T-bird with the concentration of an acrobat
venturing out onto a high wire. Beneath his tires, bare iron rails.
Between them were gaps that could trap a wheel and instantly disable
the T-bird.

He took his foot off
the accelerator. The T-bird glided along the iron girders of the
bridge like a locomotive. Then he stepped on the brake.

Bursts of yellow from
the caution lights illuminated the interior in the rhythmic bursts of
fireworks. He got out of the car and found a space between the
sawhorses. He edged into the darkened construction site.

It smelled of oiled
machinery, wet concrete, and creosote. He paralleled the BMW's
headlight beams as if he were skating on moonlight. He could see the
glint of metal. Pipes and girders were stacked on either side of him.
They were striped by dark shadows thrown from a makeshift ramp of
wooden boards and plywood just to his left. From between the gaps,
the amber caution lights winked on and off like giant jewels. Beneath
his feet, more metallic glints. Water ran in dark rivulets across the
rough underbed of the unfinished bridge.

To the west, he could
hear the roar of a car engine joining the endless hum of traffic on
1-95. But he was far away from that sound, so much like a beehive, on
a dark and perilous periphery. He was acutely aware that his work
here had as little to do with that traffic stream as it did with the
big boats berthed at the nearby island havens. He was all alone in
the night, as cut off from everyone and everything as if he were
piloting the Captain Sumo in uncharted waters miles from
shore.

From behind him came
a deep-throated roar. He turned in time to see the white BMW
airborne. The driver had used a wooden work ramp as a launch. Croaker
picked up a length of metal pipe. The BMW overflew the T-bird and was
almost upon him when he raised his biomechanical hand. He jammed the
end of the pipe between the front axle and the underbed of the car.
When it landed, it went into an arcing skid. It tipped up onto its
right-side wheels. The pipe created a shower of sparks, trailing
behind it like a Roman candle.

Croaker ran into the
shadows.

Somewhere behind him
a car door slammed. He listened for another door to slam, but none
came. There had been only one person in the BMW, and he was now
following Croaker onto the bridge.

He worked the
construction site scientifically, breaking it down into quarters and
methodically searching each one. This far onto the bridge, the beams
of the BMW's headlights were fractured into brittle shards by the
machinery and materials. The only other illumination came from the
blinking hazard lights at the foot of the bridge.

He was almost midway
over the river. The iron girders arced like a pair of mastodon's
rusks, bare and burnished in the light like patinaed ivory. He looked
down at the river, and when he turned back he saw something behind
him. Melting back into deep shadow, he circled back the way he had
come. It was difficult to make out anything clearly. The blinking
lights played tricks, causing him to see movement where there was
none. He thought he saw a patch of darkness more distinct than the
surrounding shadows. He froze where he was, watching it for some
time. It could be the silhouette of a human being, or not. But there
seemed to be a quality about it that was somehow unnerving.

A moment later he
lost the shape. He blinked. Had it moved or had it merely been a
trick of the light? He couldn't say, but in any case he moved
cautiously toward where it had been. He was now on the edge of the
bridge's skeleton. In front of him, between the bare bones of its
steel girders, the river gleamed dully.

It was in that split
instant looking down at the water that he sensed the movement behind
him. He'd heard nothing, however, but the now familiar background
sounds of the city at night. His head came up and he was turning to
look behind him when the gun butt crashed into the side of his head.

Croaker collapsed
onto the girder. The acrid smell of rust and oiled metal swept over
him as he gripped the girder. He grunted as a steel-tipped boot
struck his rib cage. It plunged into his side again. In order to get
away, he was forced farther out along the span. He crawled painfully
along the girder, with the understruc-ture below him and the river
below that. His tormentor followed, striking him again and again with
the heel of a boot. He could not see beyond that boot, could not even
turn his head enough to identify the figure towering above him.

Now the heel smashed
into Croaker's side, kicking his body off the girder. With a rush of
humid air into his lungs, he swung from the girder, holding on only
with his hands. Every time he tried to gather his legs beneath him to
try to swing his whole body back up onto the girder, a boot trod hard
on hip or knee.

Croaker felt the fear
stir deep inside his belly. This man was giving him no chance to
counter. The two choices left him were equally bad: he could either
continue to grip the girder while he was slowly pummeled into
unconsciousness or he could let go now and drop into the black and
gunmetal spiderweb of the understruc-ture. Maybe he'd survive all
that metal and drop into the river; more likely the metalwork would
break his neck or back or legs before hitting the water.

Croaker did the only
thing he could do. He waited for the boot to whistle toward him
again. Then he shifted his weight to counterbalance himself as he let
go with his biomechanical hand. Opening his stainless-steel and
titanium fingers he grabbed the boot just before it struck him and
shoved it outward.

The man fell to one
knee. In almost the same motion, he dropped his left leg downward.
The heel of his boot struck Croaker in the forehead.

Croaker almost lost
consciousness and his right hand lost its grip on the steel. Seeing
Croaker swinging from the fulcrum of one hand, the man grunted in
satisfaction. He pulled back his leg to deliver another vicious kick
and Croaker let go with his titanium fingers.

He dropped into
blackness. But it was no more than two feet. He landed on a diagonal
brace and he clung there, half-stunned, staring upward at his
adversary. He had a pain-blurred glimpse of a darkened face. Then he
was staring into the muzzle of a gun. From the manner in which the
man pointed it at him, from the tension coming into his frame,
Croaker knew he was going to use it, that he had meant to use it all
along.

When he'd been a kid
he'd loved model trains. He loved the perfect miniature world they
inhabited, stations with tiny painted metal commuters and sidings
where they picked up diminutive wooden logs. But mostly, he loved the
sound the metal wheels made over the tracks. It had a peculiar
metronomic sound that was blissful. Now, hanging by a thread from the
unfinished span, he heard that sound again.

His would-be killer
heard it, too, because he whirled in time to see a man. Though he was
crouched over, Croaker could see that he was tall and lean. He was
hurtling toward them from the far side of the span with impossible
speed. As if in a dream, Croaker saw his legs moving with the gliding
swing of an expert ice skater. Only there was no ice. He glided
across the steel girders like a wraith or a demon summoned up from
another time and place. Then he passed through a patch of light and
Croaker saw he had on a pair of in-line skates.

For a man approaching
at speed he held his upper body astonishingly still. It was very odd.
The skater held his left arm straight out as a marksman might, but
there was no gun in his hand. Instead, Croaker could see the dark
glint of a small round object held against the open palm.

The skater launched
himself through the air. He was hurtling straight at Croaker's
assailant. The man shifted his aim from Croaker's face to the
oncoming skater.

The man pulled the
trigger. The sound of a gunshot, flat and ugly, smacked against the
buildings. It rebounded over the construction site like a flock of
startled birds taking flight.

Then the man and the
skater both crashed to the concrete, entangled. The skater
immediately pressed two fingers against the side of the man's head.
The man seemed to freeze, as if every nerve connection in his brain
had been temporarily frozen. With the heel of his other hand, the
skater slammed the man's head against rough concrete. Then he opened
his slender fingers. The dark stone gleamed against the flesh of his
palm. Without a word, he pressed it hard against the man's
breastbone. The man's mouth gaped open and he arched off the steel
girder and the wet concrete.

Croaker clung to the
diagonal brace, panting with expended effort, fear, and an excess of
adrenaline. Lights blinking in the distance seemed to spin around on
mad axes. He felt his muscles begin to spasm and he knew he could not
hold on much longer.

It was then he looked
up into the face of the skater. It peered down at him, dark and large
as a harvest moon.

The skater clucked
like a mother hen. "Madre de mentiras, señor,
you are having one shitty day."

It was Antonio
Bonita.

He clambered down
until one foot was braced against the steel beam to which Croaker
clung. He reached down and gripped Croaker's hand. With surprising
ease, he helped him back onto the girder. He sat back on his haunches
as Croaker knelt.

Long after he'd
shaken off the aftermath of the vertigo, Croaker kept his chin on his
chest as if in utter defeat. He concentrated on putting the pain into
a confined space while he built back his strength.

Without warning, he
lunged at Antonio, his stainless-steel nails extruded to their full
length. But the slim man danced away, circling like a vulture on his
in-line skates. He shook his head, lifted a warning finger, rocked it
back and forth. Then one finger became two, three, four. And between
each finger he produced like a magician a dark green stone, smooth as
glass. "Not tonight, señor. Not ever."

Croaker stared at the
stones, wondering at their power. And though he knew this was
precisely what Antonio wanted, he'd been given enough warning by
Estrella Leyes and by his own experiences with the soul-catcher
Bennie had given him to know that, for the moment at least, Antonio
was beyond his control.

Croaker settled back
down, willing the tension out of his frame. Antonio nodded. "This
serenity is difficult for you, I know." He seemed pleased, as if
Croaker's effort at self-control proved a point he'd been trying to
make.

Croaker kept his
expression neutral, though he was racked by pain. "Why did you
save me?"

Antonio, circling
back, shrugged. "I like you."

"You saved me
twice." Croaker began to stretch his terribly cramped muscles.
He was careful now not to make any sudden moves. "Your brother
wanted to kill me."

"Do not presume
to know Heitor's mind, señor." "I don't
even know your mind. You killed Sonia." Antonio said nothing.
His amber eyes studied Croaker as incuriously as if he were a
specimen on a lab table.

"And yet you
came to her house pretending to be her brother, Carlito. Why?"

"I wanted to see
you for myself, señor." Antonio had come to a
halt. He was so still it was unnerving. And now Croaker knew the
shadow he'd followed out onto the girder had been Antonio. "No.
It was more. I wanted to meet you."

"So you could
lie to me? What was the bullshit with Carlito and Rosa?"

Antonio's amber eyes
darkened. In Southeast Asia, Croaker had been taken tiger hunting.
These were large, silent beasts, very powerful, very cunning hunting
machines. But these attributes were all secondary, he'd been told, to
what made the beast so deadly. It was the tiger's unpredictability.
You never knew what was in its heart, when it would turn on a dime
and claw the flesh from your rib cage. In the darkness and the
striped yellow light Antonio looked like such a large jungle
cat—sleek, swift, deadly. Unknowable.

"Others lie to
you, señor. As Carlito, I spoke the truth. Carlito
worked for us, just as I told you. The description of our operation
is as I described it. We allow the people who work for us much
autonomy. In return, they embarrass us with riches. They enjoy an
elite lifestyle—they become untouchable. They are, for a time,
like demigods."

"And Carlito?"

"He was just as
I depicted him—strong willed, vibrant, a player with a capital
P. But he was also, how shall I say, a bit too independent minded."

"So you killed
him."

"In a way, he
was responsible for his own demise, señor. He knew
the rules going in. We have no secrets from our employees on that
score. Betrayal on any level simply is not tolerated."

When, as now, Antonio
smiled in just that way Croaker could feel a connection that made his
bones grow cold.

"Now you
understand," Antonio said. "My life's work is to lead
people into sin. If I find that weakness in them, I punish them."

Such an enigmatic
man. And yet with Croaker, he seemed to ache to be known.

"Did you love
Bennie's sister Rosa? Did you ask her to marry you? Was this the
truth you told me? It couldn't be, because you killed her."

"But it is the
truth, señor. Every word."

Croaker shook his
head uncomprehendingly. "What could you possibly know about
love? Everyone you touch you kill."

"Not everyone."
Antonio pursed his lips. "But it is true that people who fall
into my orbit are, ultimately, weak. People sin. It is the human
condition."

"And, according
to you, sins demand to be punished." Croaker stirred. He could
find no position in which his body did not ache. "Why? You're
not God, to decide such things."

"In Asuncion, I
was a god. People came to me—sick unto death—people
without hope. They surrendered everything to me and I healed them."

This was the special
knowledge that Bennie's grandfather had taught the Bonitas. This was
the mesmerizing quality of his stare that caught you unguarded. "That
man who was about to kill me," Croaker asked. "What did you
do to him?"

Antonio grinned. He
offered his left hand. In it flashed a dark green stone.

"'The dark
stones know,' " Croaker said. "That's what you said on the
back of the truck. This is Heta I."

Now the grin
disappeared. "Who has told you this?" The stone vanished as
well. "Whatever you think you know of Heta I, forget.
This is sound advice, señor. It is given out of
friendship."

As he disappeared
into the darkness, Croaker called after him: "Antonio, how did
you find me here? How did you know I'd be at Sonia's?" There was
no answer, and Croaker stood on cramped legs and raised his voice.
"I'm going to track you down, Antonio. For what you did to Sonia
and Vonda."

The known landscape
consisted of the urban susurrus of cars speeding by far away, the
steady bunking of the yellow caution lights at the foot of the
bridge, the soft purling of the sluggish river far below.

From out of this
darkness came Antonio's voice: "You are already in my orbit,
señor. But as of yet you are another exception. You
have not sinned."

A seagull cried, the
lorn sound no less explosive than the sound of a gunshot. Croaker
shook himself back into awareness of the immediate environment. It
was not so easy; Antonio Bonita had a way of holding you spellbound.

Croaker went to where
the unknown gunman lay in the shadows. He was young, not more than
thirty—and he was large. He must have weighed well over two
hundred pounds. He wore black cotton clothes. Lightweight,
functional. The kind of clothes you went out in at night when you
wanted to blend into dark backgrounds. There was blood all over the
lower part of his face. Above, his cheeks and forehead were smeared
with lampblack. Even in moderate light, his face wouldn't show up.

In the impossible
instant his gray eyes opened, Croaker felt paralyzed with shock.

The man's left hand
curled into a modified fist. The knuckles, ugly with calluses and
scars, canted forward at a precise angle. Croaker, familiar with many
forms of hand-to-hand combat, recognized the preliminary movements of
karate. The fist smashed into Croaker's ribs, making him grunt in
pain. Then he kneed Croaker and went after him in earnest.

In combat, a skilled
assailant has two choices: immobilize the victim or kill him. It was
clear this man wanted to kill Croaker. He was going for the throat.

Croaker rolled and
the strike glanced off a collarbone. It was still powerful enough to
make him see stars. The man gave Croaker a vicious kick in the shin,
then drove his deadly fist inward for the killing stroke. Croaker,
gasping in pain, had only one option and he took it. He wrapped his
biomechanical fingers around the man's throat and pressed inward with
his thumb. The cricoid cartilage broke apart and within seconds the
man was dead.

It was never an easy
thing to kill a man. Even when you had no other choice, the act made
you sick in your soul. No matter what anyone told you to the
contrary, once you killed a man you were changed forever. There was a
scar inside you that no amount of time could heal.

Croaker used his
biomechanical hand to search through the dead man's pockets. He found
a wad of ten hundred-dollar bills, a handful of extra ammunition, and
a Snickers bar. Sugar for a quick burst of energy. He stripped off
the corpse's belt and steel-tipped boots, checked inside.

No I.D. No keys. Had
he left them in the BMW? A short walk to the white car revealed keys
still in the ignition. Croaker searched the car, found nothing. He
glanced at the vehicle tag, saw it was one of those reserved for a
car dealer. Stolen. No way to trace it, This man was a professional.

On the way back he
found the gun. It was a modified Colt .38 Special. One of the
modifications was black sticky tape wound very tightly around the
grip- The other was that the serial number had been filed off. The
mob used weapons like that. So did field agents of the ACTF.

Who was this man?
Croaker didn't know, but with a premonitory shiver he rolled the
bullets around his palm. He needed to get them into better light to
make sure.

Croaker stared down
at the corpse. What had Antonio done to immobilize him? Just two
fingers to the temple. Then he'd pressed a spirit-catcher to his
breastbone. Why? He needed to speak to someone with an expertise in
Guarani Heta I. Estrella Leyes.

He picked his way
back to where the dark T-bird hulked and, reaching in, turned the key
in the ignition.

Square in the beam
from the headlights, he took another look at the bullets. Dark Stars.
They were custom made. They had heads that acted like shrapnel,
exploding inside a body. Lots of damage—usually fatal, even if
you missed a vital organ. Also, there was nothing but unidentifiable
bits of twisted metal for a ballistics expert to find.

He felt as if he were
in an elevator plunging from a height of a hundred stories up. He had
seen bullets like these before. In fact, he had had occasion to use
them. They were standard issue for certain field personnel in the
Anti-Cartel Task Force.

With due deliberation
he sat behind the wheel of the T-bird. He looked at his face in the
rearview mirror. His skin was as pale as if he'd just seen a ghost.
He dropped the bullets into his pocket.

Still lost in
thought, he sped off, heading north.

What kind of hydra
had he wakened? He'd tried to penetrate something sacrosanct. The
Developing Capital Countries Trade Relations Bureau. Was that why the
ACTF, the bureau he had once freelanced for, now had him marked for
death? Maybe Ross Darling, the man who had cut off Croaker's computer
access, would provide the answers. If Darling didn't himself try to
finish the job the gunman had been given.

He rolled into SoBe
and parked on a quiet, leafy street three blocks from Ocean Drive. It
was 3:30 a.m. and he needed some sleep. Only hours before his meeting
with Ross Darling.

He hauled himself out
of the T-bird and went up the steps of a small stucco building. Its
exterior had been recently renovated. Painted deep blue and purple,
Art Deco colors to fit in with the surrounding gentrification. He was
not surprised to find the front door open. It was always left open.

This was St. Francis
of the Palms Church, but everyone in the neighborhood called it the
Surfers' Church. Sixteen months ago, the new priest had begun an
outreach program to gather the lost kids, already half-dead on coke
and heroin, who drifted like a red tide of algae through SoBe. How
successful he had been remained yet another religious mystery.

There was something
about the interiors of churches, a kind of hush that spoke directly
to the soul. You didn't have to be a practicing Catholic to feel it:
the particular density of liturgy and extirpated sins. The atmosphere
felt as if it hadn't changed in centuries, which was of course the
point. You were meant to feel that no matter where you were born,
when you passed through the sacred portal you had come home.

Croaker was not
hypocrite enough to go through attendant rituals he did not believe
in. Nevertheless, he felt the last of the adrenaline leach out of him
as he sat in a wooden pew and drank in the place.

The arches in the
cream-colored stucco interior were studded with dark wooden beams,
stark iron nails whose heads were as big around as his thumbnail. The
carved wood altar was covered by a holy cloth. Against the rear wall
rose an image of the crucified Christ. On either side were painted
plaster statues of the Virgin

Mary and of St.
Francis. The interior smelled of candle wax, age, and the sea.

Croaker put his
forearms across the back of the pew in front, lowered his head to the
impromptu pillow. The moment he closed his eyes, his mind slipped
away.

Mercifully, he could
no longer recall the instant he had pulled the trigger on his first
kill—Ajucar Martinez. Later, people would call Martinez a
madman, but Croaker knew better. Martinez wasn't nuts, he was
demonically evil. He knew just what he was doing all the way down the
line as he had slashed his way through five hookers. Croaker hadn't
told Majeur the whole story regarding Martinez. He'd not only
tattooed their faces with his razor; he'd not only cut off their
breasts. He'd made them eat the organs before he slit their throats.
Somewhere in the universe, there might be a word to adequately
describe this man, but if so Croaker didn't know it.

Croaker had caught up
with him, and when Martinez had come after him with the razor he'd
wielded so expertly, Croaker had shot him in the knee. Not nearly
enough to stop a man like Martinez, whose extraordinary will to kill
and to keep on killing was like a potent intoxicant. It wasn't even
enough to shut his mouth. His impromptu oration was horrifying—a
vivid description of his work on the whores he'd murdered. It was,
Croaker supposed, why he'd shot Martinez in the face. Twice.

The split instant
between life and death was now as opaque to him as winter ice in the
Adirondacks. But the look on Ajucar Martinez's face was not. Below a
shattered forehead, above an all but obliterated jaw and throat, the
man's eyes were open in a fixed stare. In them, Croaker could see not
only the realization of Martinez's death but a piece of his own life.
This shocked him so much that for a moment he'd felt as if his heart
had ceased to pump.

Like an animal with a
battle-scarred face, something of Croaker had been irrevocably
expended in his effort to stay alive. It was no longer his, and he
would never get it back. It was this, not the sight of all the blood,
that made him turn away and vomit.

That night he had
been pursued over the terrain of his dreams. The relentless presence
was behind him no matter which way he ran, which turns and twists he
took, no matter where he hid.

In the gray light of
dawn when he had awakened, he'd quickly dressed. Without shaving or
showering, without breakfast in a stomach clenched tight with
apprehension, he'd entered the cool echoey apse of S. Maria Gloriosa.
He had not been to his neighborhood church in many years, but now it
had become a place of ultimate sanctuary. Beneath the great
stained-glass windows where, years before, he and Matty had been
confirmed, he knelt. He spoke to no one, not even when Father Michael
had walked by and Croaker knew he had been recognized.

That afternoon, he'd
cancelled his date with his girlfriend. He could no more talk to
Angela than he could talk to Father Michael. He had awakened from his
nightmare with the sure knowledge of who was pursuing him over the
dreamscapes of his own imagining. It was God.

Croaker stirred.
There was an art to sleeping in hard, awkward places. If you didn't
know what you were doing, you'd wake up with your neck so stiff you
couldn't turn it without pain lancing up into your skull. He slid
down in the pew and looked out a side window. He watched the movement
of the leaves beneath the streetlights. In the way in which they
refracted the light, they transformed plain plate glass into the
stained-glass windows of S. Maria Gloriosa.

After a time, he
closed his eyes. He dreamed he was in a calm and peaceful place.
Blue-green light glowed like clouded sunlight on a faceted jewel. He
drifted on a diffuse and syrupy bed. Then, with a start that jolted
his heart, he realized he was lying facedown in water. His arms were
flung wide and his lungs were burning. He longed to take a breath but
he knew if he did he'd drown. At last, he couldn't hold out any
longer and he opened his mouth to breathe…

Stone Tree had once
told him of the giant lying out of sight just below the horizon.
Opening eyes full of pearls after a long night's sleep, this giant
sent reflected light into the sky in advance of the sun.

Croaker woke up to
find the sky was no longer dark.

2

At six in the
morning, Flamingo Park Stadium was not quite as deserted as one might
expect. On the western fringe of SoBe, it was surrounded by low- and
mid-rise buildings from the 1940s and 1950s. A felicitous
gentrification was infiltrating the neighborhood—renovations,
repainting, and restoring apartments to a state surpassing their
original glory. Now "condos for sale" signs hung in front
of these complexes even while workmen moved in and out of open
doorways.

At this early hour,
the tradespeople had not yet arrived, but across Meridian Avenue,
kids were tossing hardball around the baseball diamond or
skateboarding on the pavement just outside the stadium. Dogs barked
joyously as they ran, chasing one another across the playing fields.
From somewhere nearby, the scent of freshly brewing coffee entwined
with the jacaranda and jasmine.

Croaker, his
shirtsleeves rolled up, was giving an impromptu lesson in bunting to
a nine-year-old. As Phil Rizutto liked to say, bunting had become a
lost art. Croaker was just doing his bit. He felt oddly clearheaded
for someone with only a couple of hours of sleep and this was why:

Moments ago, he'd
spoken to Rafe Roubinnet on his cell phone. Rafe never slept; he
liked to watch the dying of the night from the deck of his
sixty-five-foot catamaran. After the incident on the Brick-ell Bridge
Croaker knew he'd need a safe haven. His sister's place was out of
the question and Sonia's was already known by the Bonitas. Rafe was
the obvious choice: he was a friend who owed Croaker a great deal.
The ex-politician's contacts and shrewd mind were priceless assets
now. Rafe agreed to meet him at the Miami Yacht Club at one that
afternoon.

"Here's the
key," Croaker said to a freckle-faced nine-year-old named Ricky.
"You want to hit it hard enough to get past the catcher but not
hard enough so the first or third baseman will get it in time to tag
you out."

"Swinging away,
I'm a champ," Ricky said. "I can place the ball anywhere.
You think I'm kidding? Watch." He swung the bat in a practice
swing. "Right field," he said and promptly hit it there.
"Center," he said and drove a line drive up the middle. He
put the bat on his shoulder and grinned, "It's a kinda trick,
really. Julio—he's the pitcher—sends me the right pitch
for wherever I want to hit it." He shrugged. "But with
bunting, I don't know. It's not so easy."

"Let's give it a
try." Croaker watched the kid put too much pressure on the bat
and mistime the bunt.

"Don't hold the
bat," he counseled Ricky. "Cradle it. Like this."

He didn't look up,
even when a tall, stoop-shouldered man detached himself from the last
of the shadows of the wide Meridian Avenue entrance. The man had
prematurely white hair and such a red-cheeked face he looked like
he'd just come back from a cold-weather run. He had pale blue eyes
the color of shallow water and his hair was cropped detention short.
He was not a young man but this haircut made him seem older. He had
the kind of face you rarely saw anymore—one that had once
presided over traveling carnivals. His was a face made up of equal
parts sheriff and judge. Perhaps he had seen one too many marvels of
human oddity because there was something in his demeanor that made it
clear he could no longer be surprised.

The man walked
methodically to the backstop. He had the heavy, even tread of a
veteran boxer entering the ring: one part wariness, two parts
resignation.

He wore one of those
traveler's raincoats you could fold away in a pocket. It was
tissue-thin and was as wrinkled as an elephant's hide. Beneath it, he
wore an old-fashioned charcoal suit with narrow lapels and a pair of
Cole-Haan tasseled loafers. Maybe he was an early bird on his way to
work.

When the man was
positioned directly behind Croaker, he said, "Time to talk."

Croaker spoke softly
to Ricky one more time as he repositioned his hands on the bat. When
Ricky nodded, he turned around and began to walk down the first
baseline in foul territory. The white-haired man was forced to hurry
to catch up.

"Ross Darling, I
presume?"

"Don't be cute."
Darling must be sweating in that raincoat; it was one of those awful
man-made fabrics that didn't breathe.

"Speak softly
and carry a real big dick." Ross Darling pulled his raincoat
closer around him, as if he felt a sudden chill. "What did you
think you were doing? Fooling around with Mommy's cookie jar?"

This was going to be
fun, Croaker thought. Two grown men throwing questions at each other
without much hope of getting a single answer. But there was no harm
in trying.

"I assume since
you closed me down that the distribution numbers I fed into the
computer are from the DICTRIB database."

"If they were
real I'd want to know real fast what a guy like you is doing with
them. I'd request a rendezvous with a guy like you and I'd put a stop
to your poaching, pronto."

Croaker sighed. "I
suppose this is where you pull a gun and threaten me." He stood
so that he was straddling the white first baseline.

"It's true I
don't trust you worth a damn," Darling said. "But I

don't happen to
believe in guns. They're loud and they're gross and, worst of all,
they make you lazy. When you're holding a gun you don't have to
think, do you?"

His right arm
extended and in a flash he'd manacled Croaker's biomechanical hand
with a ring of black metal. "A titanium and molybdenum alloy
even you can't break. I had it made especially." He said this
matter-of-factly, with no particular hubris.

The band held
Croaker's hand fast. He was unable to move his fingers, even to flex
them. "So you're a thinker, Darling." Croaker kicked in
what appeared to be annoyance and frustration at the lime of the
first baseline.

There was a sharp
crack of a bat. Then Darling quickly ducked as a baseball went
whizzing by him.

As he was doing so,
Croaker wedged himself against him. "Let me go," Croaker
whispered in his ear.

"What?"
Darling froze at the feel of metal pressed to the side of his jaw.

"This,"
Croaker said, "is a modified Colt .38 Special."

Darling did nothing
for a moment. He breathed evenly, in and out. Croaker could almost
hear him turning over the probabilities in his mind. At length, he
carefully snapped open the titanium and molybdenum cuff.

Croaker moved the .38
to where Darling could see it. As Darling examined it, he waved at
Ricky, who gave Darling the finger, then waved back at Croaker.
Kicking the first baseline had been the signal for the kid to hit a
ball at Darling. "It's got black tape wound around the grip and
the serial number has been professionally defaced. Sound familiar?"

"Should it?"
Darling said blandly. He'd already recovered from this small reversal
of fortune.

Croaker dug in his
pocket. "It's loaded with these." He held up one of the
handmade bullets. "I remember what we call these, Darling. Dark
Stars. Because when they hit that's all they leave. A big black
fucking hole in the target."

"You sound
pissed."

"Being set up
for target practice does that to me." Croaker waggled the .38
Colt Special. "Last night, someone tried to take my head off
with this."

The sun had crept
above the low-lying clouds on the eastern horizon. It sent its light
flooding over the top of the bleachers. A shadow, a dark crescent
made by the top tier of the bleachers, ringed the field.

"All of a
sudden, the fog's clearing," Croaker said. "Un-huh. I can
see how you'd want me killed, pronto."

"It doesn't
track," Darling said. "Think about it. Why would I set up a
meet with you and in the interim order your termination?"

"You tell me."

"I wouldn't,"
Darling said. "I didn't. Moreover, I know who did."

He was awfully cool
for a man with a gun to his head. As Croaker wondered about this, his
eye was caught by an almost phantom movement. The shadow cast by the
bleachers had changed shape. A little piece stuck up above the
symmetrical curve and this interested Croaker. It was in a place
directly behind Darling's left shoulder. Croaker was more or less
facing it. If he looked up he might see what was causing it. Or maybe
not. He'd be looking directly into the sun.

"Okay, I'll
bite," Croaker said. "If you didn't order the termination,
who did?"

Darling said archly,
"Hey, I have an idea. Let's have a piss-off. You're hot because
you've been sanctioned. I'm hot because I don't know what the fuck an
ACTF freelancer is doing with classified Dicktribe code numbers."

Croaker ground the
muzzle of the .38 deeper into the other man's temple. "Listen,
you little shit. I know there's a specific ACTF directive against
computer access by any and all DICTRIB personnel. It's clear DICTRIB
and the ACTF are enemies. I've done work for the ACTF. Last night I
almost get my head blown off by a Fed stalking me. His weapon of
choice is ACTF issue. I think you know all about the attack."

"I do. But
you're dead wrong, Croaker, if you think I had anything to do with
it."

"At least I'm
not dead."

Out of the corner of
his eye, Croaker saw the slight movement in the edge of the bleachers
shadow and knew what that meant. Without warning, he grabbed a
fistful of Darling's raincoat with his biomechanical hand and jerked
him clean off his feet. Darling stumbled and Croaker half-dragged him
into the shadows of the bleachers.

They crouched under
the seats. It smelled of rotting wood and decayed plant matter. Soft
light, laced through with sawdust, filtered down from above. It felt
cool and protected.

"What the hell
is this all about?" Darling whispered.

"Only one reason
why a man with a gun to his head stays so calm," Croaker told
him. "He's not alone." He jerked again on Darling. "Isn't
that right? Someone's at the top of the bleachers—I saw his
shadow on the field. Get him down here where I can see him,"
Croaker growled.

"You don't get
it. My man is a lookout and a sentinel. He's armed with a
high-powered rifle but I guarantee he won't shoot you."
Darling's gaze did not leave Croaker's face. "On the other hand,
he'll make damn sure no one else does."

The sudden crack of
the hickory bat against the ball was amplified by the close quarters
they were in. There were shouts of encouragement. Someone had hit a
long ball.

"Like who?"

"Why don't you
ask Spaulding Gunn, the director of your own ACTF? He's the one who
ordered the sanction." He looked at the expression on Croaker's
face. "Poor bastard. You don't believe me, do you?"

"Why should I?"

Croaker, looking out
at the playing field, could see Ricky running as hard as he could
toward first base. The ball he'd just bunted was bouncing between the
catcher and the first baseman. Right now Croaker felt like that
carefully placed ball, ricocheting between a rock and a hard place.
Who was lying and who was telling the truth?

"Okay, answer me
this," Croaker said. "I've seen compelling evidence that
there's a highly classified and volatile ACTF operation under way.
It's black-budgeted and it involves pouring agents and arms into
Mexico. Is this the truth?"

"It is."

Croaker took a
breath. Now for the question he did not want to ask. "I caught a
glimpse of what appears to be an agent code-named Sero operating
under ACTF aegis. Who is Sero?"

"Sero is the
name of Gunn's second-in-command, that much is confirmed. We don't
know his real name. Yet."

Darling was about to
say something more when his cell phone rang like the call of doom. He
looked at Croaker, who nodded his permission. He listened for a
moment, said into the phone, "You know the drill," and hung
up. "That was my sentinel," he told Croaker. "We have
to move. Now." His eyes were very pale. "Gunn's people have
found us."

"Gunn wants you
dead, on this you can rely." Darling crouched in the darkness,
his elbows on his thighs. People, typically, have one of two
reactions to confined quarters. Either they are uncomfortable in them
or they affect a studied indifference to them. Darling's reaction was
neither. In the way he held himself in this dark, cramped space was
the certain knowledge that he had served time overseas. In Southeast
Asia you learned to embrace close quarters smelling of dampness and
urine because they were often the only thing standing between you and
being caught by the enemy. You also learned to use weapons of
silence. Croaker remembered Darling's speech against guns. It had
been short and to-the-point. It had also been correct.

Croaker and Darling
were in an aluminum air conduit that hung from the ceiling of the
basement of the White House, a gay club on the north side of Lincoln
Road. It was not far from the Boneyard, the Internet sex club Gideon
and Rachel frequented.

The White House was
where Darling had taken them when he'd got the signal that Gunn's
people were on the way. Half a dozen of them—young men in
lightweight suits and Versace T-shirts. They could have passed for
models, except for the .38 guns in quick-release holsters at the
small of their backs.

Croaker knew ACTF
field personnel when he saw them.

Two were gone now,
diverted by Darling's rifle-toting Boy Scout on the top tier of the
Flamingo Park Stadium. The rest had gotten the scent and, like
bloodhounds, were not to be deterred.

"What the hell
is going on?" Croaker said. "I work for the ACTF."

Darling cocked his
head, listening to the rhythm of the industrial silence. The metered
thump of the massive compressor that controlled the central
air-conditioning unit and the generator that had come on when Darling
had cut the main power. He said, "Gunn wants you dead because
you've contracted to assassinate Juan Garcia Barbacena."

There was no point in
asking how Gunn had found out. Croaker had worked inside the ACTF
long enough to know they could ferret out just about any secret if
they put their resources behind the effort. But there was another,
more pressing question he needed to ask. He needed confirmation of
the intelligence he'd found embedded in the floppy disc. "I want
to know if Spaulding Gunn and the ACTF is running Juan Garcia
Barbacena as an agent in place in Latin America."

"Why do you
think he wants you terminated," Darling said. "Barbacena is
Gunn's point man south of the border. Gunn and the man named Sero."

Croaker felt his
heart hammering in his chest. "What if I were to tell you that
Sero is the secret nickname Bennie Milagros's grandfather called
him?"

Darling's eyes
widened. "Is this true?"

Croaker nodded.

"Christ, we've
caught a break at last!"

Darling broke off
abruptly. Croaker strained his ears. Nothing.

Croaker shook his
head. "This doesn't sound anything like the ACTF I was mustered
into."

"There's a good
reason for that," Darling said. "It's not." With his
head cocked like that, he had the appearance of a hunting dog. He
seemed satisfied that they were alone. "Within ten months of
Spaulding Gunn's appointment as director, he had eviscerated the ACTF
of all key personnel and had installed his own people. How did he
manage that? He had been given the unprecedented clout to cut through
all the governmental red tape. Somebody had an agenda that just
couldn't wait. And that somebody, we subsequently discovered, was a
group composed of canny, old-line Senators and some of the top people
at the Department of Commerce who were aggrieved that much of their
power had been taken away in the most recent governmental budget
shake-up."

"How did DICTRIB
come into being?" Croaker asked.

Darling gestured.
"Where did all the former ACTF people end up? We could have
become desk jockeys at some other bureau within State. Or we could
have taken early retirement. We did neither. Instead, we banded
together, formed a nucleus, called in every favor that was due us,
and were duly set up in a bureau of our own. Three years ago the
Developing Capital Countries Trade Relations Bureau was a sleepy
little bureau inhabited mostly by worldview economists with thick
glasses and egg on their ties. In the back rooms, where Gunn can't
see or hear, we made it into a full-fledged operations bureau, just
like the ACTF. It was a modest setup, to be sure. But it was ours. We
were determined to make it an outpost to keep track of Spaulding
Gunn, find out his agenda, and throw a very heavy wrench into it."

Darling was listening
again.

"This sounds
like war," Croaker said. "Only it can't be because it's
between two factions of the U.S. Government. It's nuts. The people
who let you take over DICTRIB can't know what you're up to. They'd
never sanction a hot war between bureaus."

"Our people are
cabinet level," Darling said. "They can and they have."

"But why?"

"Latin America,
bud. It's the next economic miracle about to take off like the space
shuttle. Only this time, it isn't on the other side of the Pacific.
It's right on our doorstep because the key to all of Latin America is
Mexico. And the profit potential is nothing short of mind altering."
Darling looked at Croaker. "The situation's like this: Gunn's
gone into orbit on this. Even his own people know it. But they're
either too greedy or too damn scared of him to reign him in. That's
where Dicktribe comes in. We edge in, take over Gunn's game, keep it
under control."

"Install your
own people, you mean," Croaker said.

"Better ours
than Gunn's, bud. Believe it."

"But first
Barbacena has to be taken out."

Darling nodded. "With
his priceless south-of-the-border contacts, he's the key. Without
him, Gunn's plan is dead in the water." He paused, tense. He
seemed to be sounding all of their environment at once. "The
name of the game is control," he said. "And in this game,
there's only one rule: he who controls the most, reaps all the
profits. And, believe me, profits are where it's at these days.
Especially for politicians. It's a whole new world for them out there
and they don't like what they see. They're running scared. People are
turning them off just like they turn off the networks for cable
channels. It's the time of the independents and that makes everybody
nervous. D'you think the speaker of the house or minority whip like
knowing they're being zapped in mid-oration? Not damn likely."

"Okay. I can see
that. But what exactly is Gunn up to with Barbacena?"

Croaker could tell
their pursuers were close. Three armed men. Three blind mice.

Another sound from
behind them caused him to turn his head. Not blind, then. They'd
sprung their trap and were closing in from both front and back. Now
Croaker understood why they'd been making so much noise. It was the
theory of the hunt: they had become "beaters," driving
their prey to the killing ground.

"They must be
using heat seekers," he whispered into Darling's ear, who
nodded. Heat seekers used infrared beams to pick up the body heat of
a human being. Even absolute darkness wasn't a deterrent.

"Keep very
still," Darling had whispered back. "There's plenty of
metal and concrete to deflect the beams."

Before Darling had a
chance to stop him, Croaker slithered farther along the conduit to a
large removable grill. Peering through the latticework, Croaker could
see a vertical ladder bolted to the concrete wall that led down into
the basement proper. There, the darkness was leavened by a series of
ancient yellow-bulbed emergency lights that had come on when Darling
had cut the power. They spread their weak glow in foot-wide circles
over rough concrete walls blue with mildew. No matter what Darling
thought, he'd be damned if he was going to be caught in a confined
space where he had no room to maneuver. He took out the .38 and
loaded it with Dark Stars.

He pushed aside the
metal grate and let himself down through it. He grasped the top rung
of the ladder and began to descend. The place smelled unpleasant and
musty, and the rungs were gritty with rust and oily dirt, accumulated
over who knew how many years.

He was less than
halfway down when the rung beneath his left foot gave way. He swung
out wildly, came crashing back against the metal ladder. The back of
his right hand smashed against a rung and the gun went spinning out
of his grasp. It landed, bounced, and skittered into darkness on the
rock hard concrete floor below.

Cursing under his
breath, Croaker steadied himself and went on, descending more
cautiously now.

Behind him, he could
hear Darling's soft breathing. He was coming.

So were the mice.

Good. They'd have to
figure they'd flushed their prey.

He reached the floor
of the basement and immediately knew he'd have no chance of finding
the gun in this ill-lighted maze. Besides, there was no time.

Once, Croaker had
gone hunting for alligators in the back country of the Everglades.
Stone Tree had given him the drill. The alligator, he had said, is a
predator. He attacks with speed, and if you turn tail and run in a
straight line he'll catch you for sure.

In the most primitive
part of his brain man is also a predator.

One of the mice was
very close now, his powerful legs pumping in long strides, taking
full advantage of the heat seeker he held in one hand. In the
darkness, he believed it gave him an absolute advantage. That belief
often made people overconfident, and this is what Croaker was
counting on.

There was ho way to
outrun him so Croaker didn't try. Predators count on their prey
turning tail and running. So Croaker did the one thing this predator
wouldn't imagine. He held his ground and, as the man bore down on
him, swung his left arm up and out. He grabbed the man in midflight,
wound his arm around the assailant's waist, and pulled him down
sharply in the direction of his own momentum.

But even as the
assailant crashed to the concrete floor, he slashed upward with a
knife. Croaker felt the blade slice through the material of his
shirt. He chopped at the man's wrist and the knife went flying, but
he had left himself open and the man sent a short, vicious chop to
his kidneys.

Croaker went down on
all fours, and the man brought the edge of his hand down sharply
between his shoulder blades. Croaker collapsed, all breath driven out
of him.

The man scrambled
after his knife. Just as his hand closed around it, Darling dropped
from the conduit and kicked out. The man was very fast and Darling
managed to connect with his shoulder instead of his throat. The man
spun around and Darling came after him. That was a mistake.

The man deflected
Darling's punch, jammed his fist into Darling's stomach. Darling
doubled over, gagging, and the man slammed a knee into the side of
Darling's face.

As Darling dropped to
the floor, Croaker drove a stainless-steel nail into the man's side.
He gasped, tried to use the heel of his hand as a club. But Croaker
grabbed it, began to twist it away. The man tried to knee him in the
groin, struck bone instead. Croaker chopped down very hard with the
edge of his hand, striking the side of the man's neck. He collapsed
in a heap.

Croaker heard shouts
from the other end of the basement. Scooping up the heat seeker, he
ran to where Darling was gasping on all fours, braced against an iron
pillar.

"Shit,"
Darling said as Croaker helped him up. "I've got to get out on
the street more." He gingerly touched his cheek. "The
bastard almost broke my jaw."

"Come on."
Croaker hefted the heat seeker. "Now we have a chance."

In a series of
storerooms, he found everything he needed: aluminum foil, wire
cutters, electrician's tape, an extension cord. He took off his
jacket and wound sheets of aluminum foil around his chest.

He whispered to
Darling as he worked. "When they demonstrated the heat seekers
to us, they warned us to be careful around kitchens—foil, the
microwave if it was on, would play havoc with the infrared beams."
He tucked the last piece of foil into his armpit. "This ought to
be enough to fool them." Then he gestured. "You're going to
be the bait, okay?"

Darling nodded.

They went back out
into the basement proper. Croaker kept track of their pursuers with
the heat seeker. "They're coming," he said. "If we're
lucky, they're only reading you."

When he found an
outlet in the wall, he went to work on the extension cord with the
wire cutters. When he was finished, he plugged in the cord. He
directed Darling farther down the basement so that the extension was
between him and their pursuers. Then he stretched the cord out until
it was taut. He taped the other end to the wall against which he
crouched. It was just above ankle height.

He could hear the
pursuers coming at a run, and he took one last glance at the heat
seeker to make sure of the trajectory of the source. He had just
enough time to register the conflicting data when someone ran right
into the center section of the extension cord. The part from which
Croaker had stripped away the insulation. A welter of sparks shot
into the air and he could smell the singe of burning cloth and flesh.
He saw two figures on the bare concrete floor spasming with the
aftermath of the electric current.

He was just getting
up from where he was crouching when he felt the muzzle of a gun press
against the back of his head.

"Okay, smart
boy, stay right where you are and call your buddy over." The
muzzle jammed painfully against his skull. No wonder the heat seeker
had given him confused readings. At some point as they had been
running, this man had separated from the others in a flanking
maneuver. "Nice and easy now. Let's not alarm him, okay?"

Croaker did as he was
told, and Darling came toward them from the spot where he'd been
standing. Sparks still flew and juddered in the darkness, throwing a
fitful illumination over the scene.

Croaker, looking
down, could see that the lower part of his legs were made visible in
the arcing light. The man, standing to one side of him and slightly
behind, might be visible, too, if you knew where to look or what was
happening.

"Stop right
there," the man said from right beside Croaker's ear.

But Darling didn't
seem to hear him; he kept on coming.

"I said"—the
man gripped the back of Croaker's neck, his thumb pressed hard in the
carotid as he swung his gun around toward Darling—"stop
right there."

There was a movement
from the shadows—no more than a blur, really—and Croaker
felt a swift current of air. Then the man pulled the trigger. The
flash of light, the harsh sound of the report, seemed contained and
magnified by the concrete walls.

Croaker slammed his
elbow into the man's side, but he was already falling. A knife blade
was buried in his throat. Croaker let him fall.

"Darling?"

"Just a flesh
wound." Ross Darling came toward him clutching his right
shoulder. Blood was dribbling between his white fingers. He gave
Croaker a small smile as he kicked the dead man who'd been holding
Croaker at gunpoint. "No so good with my fists but I still know
how to throw the knife."

"Barbacena's
mission has been to destabilize Mexico." Darling looked like an
albino. The overhead fluorescent lights drained all color from his
face. "He is doing this quite cleverly. You see, he saw in the
ragtag Chiapas dissidents a perfect cat's-paw—people with a
cause who he could indoctrinate and arm. A force he could make mighty
and manifest themselves at just the right time. Who he could use to
attain his own ends. With Gunn's help and money, he has done just
that. Even more importantly, he has given them a power base. He has
brought in professional soldiers to train farmers how to kill. He has
given them what every dissident the world over dreams of:
legitimacy."

Darling swung his
head abruptly around, said in a sharp tone, "Doctor, enough
already. Get this done and over with. I have important work to do."

They were in the
White House basement, but now the power had been restored, the lights
were on, and the area was crawling with DICTRIB agents, including a
doctor who was tending to Darling.

"The wound has
to be properly cleaned to prevent infection." The doctor was a
dark-skinned Hispanic with oiled hair and the unflappable manner of a
M.A.S.H. surgeon. It was clear he was used to plying his trade on the
fly. "Don't move." He coated a cotton swab with a yellowish
liquid. When he applied it to the wound Darling winced and bit his
lip.

"Just give me a
shot of penicillin or whatever it is and slap the damn bandage on,"
Darling said with watering eyes.

He turned back to
Croaker. "At this meeting, Gunn himself will give Barbacena his
final orders. If Barbacena is allowed to return to Chiapas, he will
sell the dissidents arms which Gunn is providing—advanced
weaponry from our own military arsenals. This superior firepower
along with key intelligence will allow the dissidents to gain
complete control of the south of Mexico. The Mexican Government will
be in complete disarray.

"In a matter of
hours they will have lost control of the reins of power. The
Bolsa—the Mexican stock market—will plunge. It will be
like 1929 on Wall Street. We are so closely tied to Mexico that our
own equity and bond markets will plunge in sympathy. In desperation,
the Mexican government will plead with Washington for help, and
ironically, Wall Street will be clamoring for exactly the same thing:
intervention of a semipermanent sort."

Young men in
shirtsleeves and holstered 9mm Brownings came and went wordlessly,
cleaning up the remains of the human carnage. The smell of
industrial-strength cleaners and disinfectants clogged the recycled
air. When they were finished, Croaker was certain there would be no
trace of this mortal encounter.

"Then and only
then Gunn and his people in the government will step in,"
Darling went on, "and, with Barbacena's help, dismantle the
dissidents piece by piece, once and for all. In their wake, they'll
leave in place a new government made up of their hand-picked people.
A puppet government, eternally in debt to certain elements in
Washington. Then these elements will be able to manipulate both the
manufacturing and the financial markets in Mexico. And you know the
saying: as Mexico goes so goes South America."

"But how are
they going to find these people so quickly?" Croaker asked.

Darling smiled as he
rubbed the white patch of gauze the doctor had taped over the wound.
"Spaulding Gunn has already recruited them, indoctrinated them,
and set them in place in positions of business prominence in Mexico
City. They're like sleepers awaiting their call to action."

Croaker thought for a
moment. "So if, during the course of this rendezvous with Gunn,
Barbacena was to be terminated you would feel… what?"

"I'd kiss your
goddamned feet!" Darling nodded. "That's right. If our
presence inside Justice has proved anything it's this: Spaulding Gunn
is a dangerous madman. The power he's been given has warped him. His
ambitions override the specific mandate he's been given. He's
planning to take ultimate control over the economic pipeline he's
helped establish with Latin America." Darling waved the doctor
away. "I'll be brutally honest, Croaker. Terminating Barbacena
is the only answer. It's a move we'd dearly love to make, but for us
it's too radical. Even if we succeeded in terminating him, even if we
were as careful as we could be, we'd leave a trail behind that
someone like Gunn is expert enough to ferret out."

He got up and they
walked through the labyrinthine basement.

"I want to be
perfectly candid with you," Darling said. "Here's what's
bothering me. More than anything, I need a way to terminate
Barbacena." He snapped his fingers. "And, just like that,
you appear." His pale gaze bored hard into Croaker's eyes. "How
is that, do you think?"

"The same
thought has occurred to me," Croaker said. "But I was
approached by a man named Marcellus Rojas Diego Majeur."

"Majeur…
Majeur." Darling rolled the name around. "He's a hotshot
lawyer for some of the elite South American drug lords."

"Right. Here's
the deal. Juan Garcia Barbacena had a wife."

Darling nodded.
"Theresa Marquesa."

"She found out
he was cheating on her. She threatened him and he killed her. He beat
her unconscious and then strangled her with an electrical cord.
Because he is protected, he'll never be charged. This is why
I was hired to terminate Barbacena. It has nothing to do with you or
Gunn or your dirty little war. It's strictly personal."

Darling considered
this. He nodded. "It makes sense. I've read the file on her
death. The police found evidence of a break-in—forced entry,
money and jewelry stolen. It was ruled an unsolved homicide and now
it's a closed case. In fact, from what I could see only a token
investigation was ever done. For instance, where were the bodyguards
when Theresa was attacked? I thought it curious that Barbacena
himself never objected."

His brow furrowed.
"There's still the matter of how you came into possession of
classified Dicktribe codes."

"The Bonitas."

"Christ, if the
Bonitas are involved…" Darling turned, signaled to an
agent who hurried over with a notebook computer. Darling snatched it
from him and crouched down. He turned it on and his finger spun the
trackball mouse.

"This is a
classified ACTF file we're looking at," Darling said.

Nothing was
sacrosanct these days, Croaker thought as he scanned the information
on the screen, not even the most top-secret files. But then he knew
firsthand what the government could compile on an average citizen.
Just about everything, down to his children's preferences in toys and
videos.

Croaker was looking
at what the ACTF called a Serial UnSub, a file put together over time
with enough similar or identical bits and pieces of murder MOs to
designate the case "Serial Murders, Suspect Unknown."

"You see, this
one was relatively easy to compile," Darling said. "All the
victims were decapitated."

"And none of the
bodies were ever found." Croaker ran his gaze down the list.
"This file is four years old."

Darling nodded. "The
first decapitated head was discovered out- side Tallahassee. Coroner
indicated in his report that the murderer knew his business. No
cutting and hacking, no jagged wounds. The neck was severed neatly
and completely with a scalpel."

Croaker had an
immediate flash of Heitor Bonita in the gaping black doorway of the
panel truck, wielding a scalpel. "With only a scalpel?" he
asked.

"That was the
coroner's judgment. There were no metal tooth marks."

Croaker looked up
from the screen. "So the murderer didn't use a saw. He severed
the spinal column with just the scalpel. That would take a lot of
strength."

"It would take a
goddamn bull."

Croaker wanted more
than anything to take a breath of fresh air, to see the blue sky and
feel the sun burning his skin, but he was in the wrong place for
that. It would be nice, one day, to feel clean again, but he wondered
whether he ever would. "The Bonitas are responsible for all
these murders, aren't they?"

"We think so,
even though there's no proof." Darling used the trackball and
the screen changed. "Take a look at this."

Croaker scanned
another confidential ACTF file. It detailed a burgeoning black market
for human organs in the Southeast.

"There's
something this file doesn't show," Croaker said. "You have
very little time to get an organ from one body to another. Except for
kidneys, organs can't be kept outside a human body for long. Antigen
typing typically takes six to eight hours. How did these people know
which bodies to send to which recipients?"

"We have no
idea." Darling said it in a voice that led Croaker to believe he
had other, more pressing questions to answer. "We've been trying
to figure out why Gunn has these files. He's tracking the Bonitas;
he's keeping a close eye on the organ harvesting ring. But he's not
taking any action against it."

"Evil soul, this
Gunn," Croaker said. "Clearly, there's a connection between
him and the Bonitas."

"You bet."
Darling shut down the computer. "I see they hacked into our
system, which, considering our safeguards, is alarming enough. But
just what the hell were they up to slipping you Dick-tribe
codes?"

Croaker sighed. "I
think it was accidental. The Bonitas and Bennie Milagros have a
history together, and it's not a particularly pleasant one. Bennie
pretended to be my friend. He didn't tell me he was working for Gunn.
He's involved in your little war up to his eyebrows. That's the
material they wanted me to see. The DICTRIB

codes just happened
to be embedded at the tail end of the file. The Bonitas probably
didn't even know they were there."

"Let's hope
you're right. In the meantime, I'm changing all the computer security
codes." Darling left the computer on the concrete floor while he
walked Croaker to the rear stairway that lead up to an alley behind
Lincoln Road. "I wish I could give you more tangible help, like
backup or tactical support, but it just isn't possible. So far as
I've involved myself with your safety, I've already put my bureau at
risk."

"Don't worry,"
Croaker said. "I appreciate the help you have given me."

Darling extended his
hand and Croaker took it. "One more bit of advice. Stay as far
away from the Bonitas as you can. They're pure poison. And, as you've
seen, they're being protected by Gunn." Those eyes that seemed
witness to all man's foibles and follies now stared deep into
Croaker's soul. "Get to Juan Garcia Barbacena. For the good of
everyone, do what needs to be done. And then for God's sake get
clear."

3

Croaker listened to
Love's 1968 album Forever Changes as he sped north to Palm
Beach on I-95. Somehow, the band's rococo psychedelia seemed
appropriate to the occasion.

American interests
inside Latin America. It was business as usual, he thought. We were
going south of the border for the same reason we always stick our
noses into foreign countries: to protect the interests of a very
privileged few. With the Latin economies exploding, we sure as hell
wouldn't want insurgents or, worse, socialist-leaning governments in
power. We marched into Kuwait for the oil lobby. Which lobby was
backing Gunn? The autos? Maybe it's the exporters. It made sense.
Mexico is our second largest export market behind Canada. We couldn't
afford to let that level of profit be compromised by the
rabble-rousers. But that kind of work is plenty dirty. It's got to be
kept behind locked doors.

Thoughts of secrets
led him, inevitably, to Antonio and Heitor. They're pure poison,
Ross Darling had said. And as you've seen, they're

being protected
by Gunn. Of course they were protected. According to the files,
they were running an organ harvesting operation with ACTF connivance.
Is that how Gunn had amassed his enormous power in so short a time?
Was it leveraged off the dead bodies of people murdered by the
Bonitas? How many elderly senators, congressmen, cabinet members,
would be lined up for new parts, assured they could get any organ
their aging bodies needed? Croaker didn't care to speculate on
numbers. When it came to survival, human beings were the cleverest of
species. Stone Tree had told him that. He said it was because they
were so damned good at rationalizing. Even the most evil of men
fervently believed they were acting out of right and good.

Except maybe the
Bonitas. Croaker had spent enough time around Antonio to understand
that there was a difference in these twins, they were something
"other." There was a terrible, pale fire in their souls
that was inextinguishable. It would be easy to mistake that fire for
Heta I. They were people who knew good from evil; they had
simply chosen evil.

He exited the highway
and went east on Okeechobee Boulevard, to Olive, which was U.S. 1.
There he went north.

What was bothering
him the most was Rachel. It was just too coincidental her getting ill
at just the time Barbacena was coming into Miami. The moment Gideon
had told him the drugs she and Rachel had taken were clean, he'd
become convinced that Rachel's collapse and condition had somehow
been engineered. But how? And by whom? He had one suspect in mind,
but he needed some kind of proof.

He pulled into the
parking lot of the Royal Poinciana Hospital.

The true hell of his
situation was now staring him in the face. Even if his suspicions
about Rachel being set up proved true, there was nothing he could do
about it. She was still dying. Without the kidney being offered by
Majeur's client she wouldn't last the week. He was sinking deeper and
deeper into a wide-ranging conspiracy. But his path was set. Kill
Juan Garcia Barbacena and Rachel would live. There were no
alternatives. The fact that Majeur and now Darling had given him any
number of reasons to detest Barbacena did not help much. Killing
someone in defense of your own life was one thing. Coldly and
calculatingly planning a murder from afar was quite another. Croaker
had met a good number of paid assassins and mercenaries in his time.
One thing they all shared that Croaker did not was they had hearts of
stone.

Croaker got out of
the T-bird and wanted to run across the con- crete. It was not yet
eleven and the day was already swelteringly hot.

The hospital was as
cool and hushed as the mechanism of a Swiss clock. There was
something about hospitals that made you tired the moment you walked
in. Maybe they fed gaseous tranquilizers into the recycled air to
keep everyone calm.

In CCD, Croaker
tiptoed into Rachel's cubical. She looked white as milk and so thin
she might have floated away if not for the blanket and sheets. Blue
veins pulsed slowly beneath skin turned thin and waxy. The digital
readouts told him she still had a fever. They hadn't yet beaten the
sepsis infection.

As he kissed her warm
forehead, he whispered, "I found Gideon. She'll be here soon,
honey." Then he took her limp hand in his and squeezed. "Hold
on, Rachie. You've come this far. Just hold on a little longer."

Matty, returning from
the bathroom, saw him and flew into his arms.

"Lew, where have
you been? Where did you sleep last night?" She had been weeping,
he saw. The sight of him made her begin all over again.

"Hush." He
stroked the side of her face. "By tomorrow she'll have a new
kidney."

"Oh, Lew!"

He gently disengaged
himself from her arms. "Matty, do you have that extra key to
your apartment?"

She nodded, rummaging
through her handbag. As she handed it to him, she said, "You
found Gideon, didn't you? What's he like?"

"Not at all what
I expected."

"I'd like to see
him." She drew out a Kleenex and wiped beneath her eyes. "In
a way I feel I know him. He's a kind of link now to her."

Croaker led her to a
chair and made her sit down. "Have you seen Dr. Stansky?"
He did not want to continue talking about Gideon. His sister already
had enough on her mind without having to deal with Rachel's sexual
orientation.

Matty shook her head.
She looked very tired. "Usually, he comes in late in the day. Do
you want me to give him a message when I see him?"

"No. In fact,
don't even mention I asked." He leaned down and kissed her
cheek. It was as cool as Rachel's was warm. "Are you okay,
Matty?"

"I'm fine."

"You don't look
it. When was the last time you ate?"

She gave him a wan
smile. "I'm not hungry."

"Force yourself.
Honey, this will be over soon. Everything will be all right, I
promise you. In the meantime, you're no good to Rachie in this
state."

She forced a wider
smile and nodded. He left her there, at her vigil. There was nothing
more he could say. But he went down to the commissary and bought some
food, which he asked a floor nurse to give her.

He found Jenny Marsh
in her Drug Abuse Study laboratory down the hall from CCD. She looked
up from her position bent over a microscope. Beyond, two young
assistants glanced at him, then went back to their work at the bank
of centrifuges. She put down the pen with which she'd been jotting
notes on a yellow lined pad. She smiled. It was a cool smile,
detached, almost impersonal. It was not the smile he wanted.

"I hope you can
catch up on your sleep this afternoon," he said. "Sometime
after midnight the kidney will be released."

"Excellent."
She nodded, still all-business. "I'd already planned on staying
right here. There are a couple of cots in the next room. I'll call
you the moment I get word it's on its way. You can watch the
operation if you wish."

"That may not be
possible." Who knows where he'd be. Maybe floating face down in
shallow water. He lowered his voice as he came closer. "There's
something else I learned. It might be significant. The drugs Rachel
was taking the night of her collapse were pure."

Surprise registered
on Jenny Marsh's face. "That can't be right. It's highly
unlikely she'd have gone into coma from the amounts she was taking
unless the stuff had been cut with something bad."

"I thought that,
too. But I spoke to the person she was with that night. This person
took the same drugs—the whole cocktail—acid, joints,
coke, and she was fine. On the other hand, she presumably has two
kidneys, unlike Rachel."

"Wouldn't
matter." Jenny was frowning. "There's something odd here
but I'll be damned if I know what it is."

"I've been
wondering about that myself." She tapped a finger on the lab
counter. "It's probable that in her weakened condition she's
having a difficult time fighting off an infection a healthy person
would get rid of in hours."

He was watching her
expression carefully. "You don't seem convinced."

She looked up into
his face, and he could clearly see the weariness and worry there. 'To
tell you the truth, I'm not." She indicated the slide she had
been viewing when he'd come in. "I've got nothing tangible to go
on. In fact, from a strictly medical point of view it would be
surprising if she had thrown the infection off easily. And yet the
fact that she's made no progress at all is bugging the hell out of
me. It's as if every time we take one step forward Rachel takes two
steps back."

He waited in vain for
her to finish her thought. When he saw that she wasn't going to, he
said, "What about the transplant? Can you do it if the fever
isn't down?"

"That wouldn't
be advisable," Jenny said.

Croaker didn't like
the sound of that. "You've got to get the infection under
control before I give you the kidney."

She nodded. "We're
doing our best, Lew, believe me."

"I know you
are." He put a hand briefly over hers and squeezed. She pulled
her hand gently but firmly away.

One of the assistants
extracted a test tube from the centrifuge, held it up to the light.
She said something to the other assistant, who nodded. They went into
the adjacent room.

"Jenny, what's
the matter?" he asked. "You're acting like last night never
happened."

"When I was in
high school—before I hit all those college courses that turned
my desire to be a doctor into an obsession—I was a different
person. All I thought about then was boys. What sweater, what skirt
to wear to show off what I had. It was a carefree time of life."

He looked down at
her. "Sounds good to me."

She nodded. "It
was lovely. But I've got too many responsibilities now to let my eyes
go out of focus." She got up and went over to the windows. He
stood a little apart from her. From this position, he could see a
pulse beating in the hollow of her throat. "The truth is, I've
missed you. Already. This is a very bad sign."

He cocked his head.
"Bad in what way?"

She turned to face
him. "Because when I woke up this morning the first thing that
entered my mind was 'What am I going to wear today? I want to look
good for Lew."

He smiled. "That
doesn't sound so dire."

"It does to me.
I've built my whole world to work along certain lines. Now—with
you—it's being blown to pieces."

He drew her into his
arms. "Be strong, Dr. Marsh. Let your eyes go out of focus an
hour a day." He looked into her green eyes. "Surely you can
spare me that much out of your hectic life."

"Oh, Lew—"

Her lips opened
against his and he felt the heat coming off her. Her body was
trembling with repressed desire. He stroked her back and her body
began to melt against his. She tore herself away at the sound of her
returning assistants. He wondered if her heart was pounding as hard
as his was, but one look in her eyes told him it must be.

With an effort, she
got her breathing back to normal. She set limits for her behavior and
kept to them. He liked that in her. "Listen, do me a favor. If
Stansky makes rounds early today, make up some excuse but keep him
away from Rachel."

"Why?"

He squeezed her hand.
"I'm not sure yet. I'm working on a theory. I know how you
doctors like to band together so I don't want to go around accusing
people without backup."

"But if you
suspect Stansky's some kind of threat to her… My God, I've got
to know that."

"Believe me,
when I have something, I'll call you. I have your beeper number.
Okay?"

For a moment she held
on to his hand. Her eyes searched his face, as if she was trying to
memorize every line and feature of it. "I was wrong before. It's
a good feeling to miss you and then have you walk into my lab, but…"
For an instant her eyes clouded over and he thought she was going to
cry. Her voice was a hoarse whisper. "Come back, Lew. Promise
me."

He smiled at her. "I
promise."

But a dark and evil
presentiment gripped his heart. He knew she was thinking of the
vision the soul-catcher had shown her of him lying facedown in
shallow water. The scene of his death.

The flamingo T-bird
was waiting patiently for him in the hospital parking lot. He
unlocked the car, turned on the ignition. It was as hot as Hades in
there and he stood outside for a time with the door open and the air
conditioner going full blast. Then he got in and drove it slowly over
to Matty's place. He luxuriated in the feel of the heavy engine, the
solid bodywork, the smell of the lovingly conditioned leather seats.
For an instant, time rolled back to when he was eighteen, when all he
could think of was girls and cars, maybe in that order, maybe not,
depending on his mood. Could be that was as close as he had come to
being carefree. But unlike Jenny Marsh, he'd grown up in Hell's
Kitchen, where nothing worth having came without a serious price.
Every day created another battleground, another fight over territory,
bragging rights, a girl.

And always there was
some hothead eager to bounce your brains off the sidewalk. As he
pulled into the Harbour Pointe visitors' parking lot he wondered what
it would be like being a part of Jenny's carefree high-school days.
He found he couldn't imagine it.

Even though he had
the key, the concierge stopped him, consulting a list owners compiled
with the names of people who had keys. Matty, hoping he would stay
with her, had put his name on the list the night he'd slept over.

Upstairs, he went
directly into Rachel's room. Everything was the same as the last time
he was here. He went to the dresser, opened the bottom drawer. There
was the large sachet. Carefully, he untied the ribbon that held the
cloth together and pulled a small diary from the fragrant crumbles of
dried flowers and spiced herbs. Just as Gideon had told him.

He sat on Rachel's
bed and ran his hand over the surface. It was dark blue paperboard
with tan corners of simulated leather. He opened it and, with a
heavily beating heart, began to read.

The first entry was
dated January 1 of this year. Croaker quickly riffled through the
pages. Rather than making an entry for every day, Rachel had written
only about key events during the year. Obviously, she was not a girl
to scribble "Woke up, had a fight with Mom, went to school, met
Gideon, got stoned."

In fact, as he began
to read in earnest, he saw this was less a diary than the
stream-of-consciousness inner workings of his niece's mind. It was
not an easy read. There are places in the human soul so intimate to
bare them is shocking. In them dwell deformed things: strange wishes,
bizarre desires, obsessions even—all the demons that drive us
but should never see the light of day. Rachel had felt a need to give
these shadows life, and now Croaker was poring over them like a
shaman studying the thrown bones of a sacred animal.

Halfway through, he
set aside the diary and looked up. He saw Rachel standing on the far
side of the bedroom. She was looking at him just as if she were
really there. She didn't look like the dying girl he had just left in
the hospital; instead, she appeared very much like the girl in the
prom dress photo—solemn but healthy. This illusion opened its
mouth and spoke to him in the words he had just read:

"Today something
snapped. When Mom told me Donald was dead I could hear a sound like a
clap of thunder. Mom was watching my face real hard to see what I'd
do. So I did nothing, just sat there and stared at my corn flakes.
And then I thought about how cruel Donald and I had been to each
other for two years. Pretending it was over when obviously it wasn't.
That thought defeated me. I can't explain it, but I had this weird
urge to take a carving knife and slit my wrists to the bone. I might
have done it, too, if I didn't think of how sad it would make Gideon.
I spent about ten minutes imagining her face, imagining my blood all
over the floor. Her face, my blood. I just couldn't do that to her.

"But I wanted
to. I could feel the ache like a magnetic pull. I want to rush
headfirst into that California mountainside. I wanted so much to join
him. What was I going to do without him? I can't imagine…"

"The thing is
Donald loved me. I know he did. In fact, I'm sure now he loved me
more than he ever loved Mom. I hate him for that; for other things,
too. But none of that stops me from loving him. Just the opposite,
really. It's as if many of the things he did bound us closer
together. It's odd. Mom came to hate him because of his cruelty. She
never got it. I think that's what enslaved me to him. That's the
right word, too, enslavement. I'd do anything he asked of me.
Anything. And that was the secret—that was the bond between us.
He could have asked me to plunge a knife into my breast and I would
have done it without a second thought. Not that he would have,
though. He was too busy using his penis like a weapon…

"Those sessions
hurt me. But the pain was so sweet. I would come with tears in my
eyes, with my body shaking. Sometimes, there was blood. Just a little
bit, a drop, a crimson eye. This, too, would bind us, like an oath.
On our hands and knees, we'd wipe it up together. And, afterwards, he
was so tender…

"When he told me
he'd started training me when I was so young, I immediately thought
of The Story of O, which he gave me to read when I was ten.
I read it over and over until I had memorized whole passages of it.
I'd recite it during some of our sessions and that seemed to turn him
on like nothing else. At first, I thought it was the words, because
sometimes we'd act out the scene I was reciting. But then I came to
understand. He loved the fact I'd learned his lesson so completely…

"When he asked
me if I thought what we were doing was wrong, I remember looking into
his face and saw something I'd never before seen there: fear. It was
then I understood that he was as much enslaved as I was. We both
existed here, apart from the world. It seemed to me that the sessions
were the only time we were alive. Outside this circle of secrets, we
were just letting hours pass, going through the motions of living.
But it wasn't living at all. The longing for each other, the denials,
then, after all that holding back, the rush of joyous pain…
and that single crimson drop of blood—that was living."

Croaker took a deep
breath, and the vision of Rachel vanished. He put a hand to his
forehead, found that he was sweating. He had spent most of his adult
life picking through the twisted labyrinth of the criminal psyche.
You tried to enure yourself, to find ways to detach yourself so you
wouldn't be swept under by the garbage. But it wasn't possible.
Because you were sticking your nose into a place that was,
essentially, the only true sanctuary left.

Over the years,
Croaker had learned not to be shocked by these revelations. But this
was different. Rachel was no criminal, no psychopath. She was just a
girl in desperate need of help. And she was his niece.

This terrible peek
into her soul chilled him to the bone. If it was true that you never
really knew what people were thinking, it was also true that, most
times, you didn't want to find out.

This was why homicide
cops burned out. The better they were, the faster the burn. Because
there was only so much close exposure to psychosis you could take.
Then it was time to close your eyes and turn away from a sun that
burned too bright and had come too close.

He wiped his face
clean of sweat, took up the diary again and read the second half.

At length, his vision
of Rachel as she had been reappeared in the bedroom. This time, she
was sitting cross-legged in the center of the floor. "It must
have been fate," his vision of her said. "When Ronald put
his hand on my naked breast during a physical exam, my nipple rose
against his palm and he twisted it until tears came to my eyes. Then
I knew, and I was his. I asked him after that first session how he
knew. He said he could see it in my eyes. I asked him what he saw,
and he told me, 'You were naked and when you looked at me I saw there
was no barrier between us.' I wonder if that's the definition of
submission? Then he asked me the question I'll always remember: I've
seen you naked before, many times. But there was always the wall, the
defense of the inner castle. What changed today?'

"Of course I
knew. It was Donald's death. That's what's changed me. And then I saw
how I could go on. Being with Gideon is nice. I can even say I love
her. But, for me, love isn't enough. There's this thing
inside me for which I have no name. It's the thing Donald tapped
into. It's the same thing that Ronald saw in my eyes. I need it. I
have to have it. Now I know I can go on. The sessions will continue.
I will survive…"

So the sessions—as
Rachel called the S-M sexual trysts—continued with Dr. Ronald
Stansky standing in for her father, Donald Duke. It was a sick story,
getting sicker all the time. How damaged must Rachel be in order to
cling to this way of life? So severely damaged that she was
misunderstood by everyone. There was something about that damage that
set her apart—made her unknowable, even to Gideon. Croaker
wanted to gather her up in his arms and protect her. His heart broke
for Rachel, who craved only one thing: love. If only she knew it.

If she survived this
trial, he'd have to see she began a whole new life. And that meant
telling Matty everything.

But not now. Not yet.

He was so caught up
in these thoughts that he almost missed it. But something had caught
in the net of his memory and he flipped back to the next-to-last
page. It was dated three days before Rachel's collapse.

"This last
session was strange," she said. "I mean all sessions are
strange. Donald once told me that's where their power lies, in
opening yourself up to all the dark forces inside yourself,
surrendering to them. But this was stranger than most.

"I guess it was
because we weren't alone. I mean, often we weren't alone in the
beginning. During the medical tests, of course, Ronald's nurse would
be bustling around to draw blood or set the X-ray machine in place or
take the specimen cup from me. I guess he had to do these tests to
make it okay for me to be at the clinic so often. But after the
tests, the nurse would leave and Ronald and I would be alone to begin
our journey. It was odd but exciting, doing it in the examination
room—all that clinical stuff and here we were banging away. I
think that's why Ronald never took me to a motel or anywhere else.
Also, in a motel room that doctor-patient thing wouldn't be there.

"This time,
there was someone with him. A man, tall and lean and dark. He looked
like a shadow. Ronald asked if I would mind. The man wanted to watch.
He wouldn't touch me, wouldn't say a word. Just watch. Somehow, I
liked that. It reminded me of how I sometimes felt with Donald. I
wanted Mom to see us together, even though I knew it would hurt her
terribly. But it was the only way she would ever get to know me, and
I knew she never would.

"So I said okay.
I let the man watch. He did it like he'd done it before, like he knew
what it meant to watch. Not just seeing things, but
observing. I knew everything Ronald and I did meant
something to him, and that made our pleasure so much more intense.

"Afterward, when
Ronald was cleaning up, the man came over to me. We looked at each
other for such a long time it felt as if my lungs would burst. 'I
didn't know,' he said. It was such a mysterious thing to say, a
little thrill went through me. And he had this voice, not much more
than a hoarse whisper. I wanted to ask him what he meant, but I
thought I'd look like an idiot. For some reason, I knew this was
someone I didn't want to embarrass myself with. 'I didn't know
anything about you.' he said. I was so startled I felt my heart leap
just as if it was a football kicked between the goalposts. Blood
rushed in my temples and I couldn't say a thing.

"Later, when he
and Ronald sat talking, I drifted into the other room. They didn't
notice. When talk gets serious, men have no use for girls or women.
His suit jacket was hanging on this old-fashioned wood coat rack
Ronald has at the clinic. I was drawn to the jacket as if it was
magnetized. For a long time I didn't do anything. I was content to
let it brush against my cheek. It smelled strongly of him and I liked
that. Then I slipped my hand inside and found his wallet. It was one
of those European-style wallets like Donald used to carry—slim
and so long you can't stuff it into your back pocket. It's a rich
man's wallet because you have to put it in the inside pocket of a
suit jacket. It was made out of crocodile skin, dyed a blue so dark
it looked black. I loved that color. I opened it up, not knowing why,
and then I saw his name embossed in gold: Trey Merli. Could anyone
really have that name? If you drop the y,'tre merit' means
three blackbirds, in Italian. I read it over and over again, until it
took on a kind of magical quality. Trey Merli."

There, the entry
seemed to end. However, in the two blank lines left before the end of
the page, Rachel had scribbled something hastily in pencil. It was an
address. Trey Merli's?

Croaker looked up
from Rachel's diary, the blood singing in his veins. According to
Vonda Shepherd, Trey Merli owned Gold Coast Exotic Auto Rentals in
Margate. Gold Coast was the place Majeur had rented the grape-colored
Lincoln. Now it turned out that Merli knew Dr. Ronald Stansky. What
could that mean? Croaker didn't yet know. But it was clear that the
evil engine in Margate that he had glimpsed was about to deliver up
its black and ugly secrets.

The address Rachel
had scribbled in her diary was on Hibiscus Island. The island was out
in the middle of Biscayne Bay. You got there by crossing the bay on
the MacArthur Causeway, taking the Fountain Street turnoff onto Palm
Island, then continuing onto Hibiscus.

The island was small,
no more than ten blocks long and just two blocks wide, but it was
home to large, stucco houses, each with their own boat mooring.
Croaker eased the T-bird into the curb in front of a white house in
the middle of the block. It looked similar to its neighbors, except
for the dark blue awnings and the matching trim. He got out. The
brutal heat felt good on all his aches and pains.

He went up the
driveway paving and rang the doorbell. There was no response, so he
walked around the side of the house, past orange bougainvillea and
pink hibiscus. In the back was the Florida room and a screened-in
pool area. Eight white chaise lounges with blue Textilene cushions
were arranged in two rows so perfectly one would think there was a
photo shoot going on. The area, however, was deserted. The pool
filters burbled like a just fed infant; a palm tree's fronds brushed
against the top of the screen. On a cart sat a pile of freshly
laundered towels in candy-colored stripes. Below, were three
different kinds of sunscreens.

Beyond the
screened-in pool was the bulkheaded dock. There was no boat in the
slip, but when Croaker came around the back he saw that the screen
door was not entirely shut. He opened it and stepped inside. Through
the windows straight ahead he could see a large living room. To the
right were the windows of the master suite; to the left, the windows
of the two-bedroom guest wing. The only movement he saw was of a
green plastic alligator float drifting in the pool. It eyed him
incuriously as he crossed the patio. The slider to the living room
was unlocked and he stepped into the air-conditioned interior.

He was met by a sea
of beige and off-white furniture. It was expensive, spotless, and
uncreased. Five place-settings were arrayed on the Travertine marble
dining room table around a high spray of fresh flowers. But there was
no smell of food. Neither was there a hint of perfume or cigarette
smoke.

In the kitchen,
Croaker went through the pantry and cabinet drawers. All were well
stocked with food, gadgets, and utensils. He left the refrigerator
until last. Ever since Sonia's death that commonplace utility item
had taken on an eerie aura. He could never again open a refrigerator
door without thinking of her head staring at him from inside.

With his grip tight
on the handle, he thought, What if Trey Merli's head is in there?
Then, his teeth gritted, he jerked the door open. Inside, were the
normal contents of a normal refrigerator, nothing more.

He waited a moment
for his accelerated pulse to slow a bit. The door shut with a small
sigh.

More beige and
off-white in the luxurious master suite: a king-size bed, an antique
French Provincial armoire that had been stripped and bleached, a wall
mirror framed in gilt. Croaker looked through the armoire without
finding anything of interest beside the fact that Trey Merli had good
taste in clothes and a good deal of money. His fashion colors ran to
dark blue suits and white shirts, something Croaker could have
guessed from the exterior of the house.

At the foot of the
bed was a large sand-colored lacquer box approximately thirty inches
deep and almost as long as the width of the bed. Beside one night
table was a remote. Croaker picked this up and pressed the Open
button. The box at the foot of the bed opened soundlessly and
equipment rose out of its depths. There was a twenty-four inch TV, a
VCR, a laser-disc player and a welter of software. Croaker counted
more than a dozen videotapes and about ten laser discs in slip cases
like those old-fashioned LP records used to come in.

On the bed was a neat
stack of three white dress shirts. They were freshly laundered,
folded around cardboard sheets, held in place by paper ribbons. Taped
to the opened sheet of brown paper on which they lay was taped the
cleaner's pink copy of the receipt. The shirts were the same style
and brand that were inside the armoire.

But now Croaker could
see something odd. It wasn't about the shirts but about the cardboard
around which they were folded. They looked doubled over. He held on
to the top shirt and, using his biomechanical fingers, slid the
cardboard out. Only to discover a manila folder.

As he looked at it he
felt his heart give a lurch. The name typed on the tab was Sonia
Villa-Lobos.

He opened the file.
It was a record of Sonia's medical history as recorded by Dr. Ronald
Stansky. He saw, with a glance to the top of the page, that this file
came from Stansky's clinic in Margate, not from his private practice
office in West Palm Beach. Sonia was Stansky's patient?

Quickly, he withdrew
the second file, looked at the name typed on the tab. To his horror,
he saw that it was Vonda Shepherd's file. He flipped it open. She was
Stansky's patient as well? Even if he believed in coincidences—which
he didn't—he'd never buy this as one. He saw many of the same
tests being performed in the same order. Maybe that was medical
protocol, maybe not. But they all ended with one specific test that
made his blood run cold.

He drew out the third
file. His mind refused to register the name on it. Rachel Duke. His
right hand shook as he leafed through the file with an increasing
sense of alarm. His mind began to spin in a certain direction that,
quite frankly, scared the hell out of him. If he was correct…

He folded down the
brown paper wrapping, took a look at the name of the cleaners on the
receipt: Jiffy Tyme Dry Cleaners, it read. The address was on
Biscayne Boulevard. Why did that sound familiar?

Croaker froze. He'd
heard something—a small sound coming from the living room. He
silently moved to another spot in the bedroom, one that had a better
view of the open doorway into the hall.

The hall was empty as
far as the first turn. Beyond that, he was bund.

He went out of the
bedroom and down the hall. Just before the turn, he paused.

"I can't see
you," a voice said. "But I can see your shadow."

The voice sounded
very familiar.

Croaker went slowly
and deliberately into the living room. The slim, amber-eyed man was
sitting cross-legged in an overstuffed off-white chair.

"I see we're
fated to keep running into one another, Antonio." he said.

"And at the
oddest moments." His arms rested lightly on the upholstered
chair. "And may I inquire as to your purpose here?"

Croaker watched him
with fixed intent. "You mean you don't know?"

"I want to hear
it from your mouth." His amber gaze flicked from the windows, to
the paintings on the walls, to the perfectly set dinner table, before
fixing Croaker. "¡Que hermosa tu boca!" How
beautiful is your mouth.

"You never
answered my question," Croaker said.

The narrow, handsome
head never moved. "Which question?"

"About Rosa. You
told me you loved her, Antonio. But you couldn't have loved her. You
killed her. You lopped off her head as if she were an animal."

For a long time the
amber-eyed man said nothing. But there was something building inside
him. It was like the pressure drop your ears registered in the quiet
just before the onset of a terrible thunderstorm.

"No," he
said quite suddenly. "I killed Rosa."

He rose, unfolding
from the chair, and came slowly and casually toward Croaker. This
is how you recognize a man, Stone Tree had once told Croaker. He
can change his name, he can change his I.D., he can even change his
face. But his gait will always give him away. Just as fingerprints
can identify a man out of a million similar men, so can a man's gait.
That never changes. Even if he breaks a bone, his body adapts and the
peculiarities of the old gait reemerge.

This wasn't Antonio.
It was Heitor. Croaker knew Antonio's rolling, liquid gait; this
man's was altogether different. It was angular, full of small,
impatient motions.

"I wondered what
my brother was up to," Heitor said. "Telling tales out of
school is not his style, is it? No." This close, Croaker could
smell his animal scent. This man held no respect for the restraints
of civilization. "And the death of Rosa Milagros is the tale
that should be told least of all." He spoke quietly, slowly, as
if he were on Valium. "It disturbs me greatly that he thinks of
Rosa still. He loved her, he said. To you."

"He told me he
was damned," Croaker said with some effort. "Now I think
you're both damned."

He turned and headed
across the living room toward the slider. Through the glass he could
see sunlight spin off the pool. He could just see the head of the
plastic alligator, floating without a care in the world. Good thing
it could not know that with each moment sunlight was degrading its
skin. All too soon it would begin losing air and then it would be
tossed in the garbage.

Croaker felt Heitor's
presence just behind him. Good. He did not want Heitor anywhere near
the master suite.

"Once, I dreamt
I was damned." Heitor said this as if he and Croaker were in the
middle of a conversation.

Croaker stopped in
front of the slider. In its glass, he could see Heitor's reflection
as he spoke.

"In this dream,
I trod upon the flaming heads of the damned. As I neared them, they
bent their heads, presenting their necks so that a flat path appeared
for me. At the end of the path was the Devil." Heitor crossed
his arms over his chest. "How would you imagine him, señor?
As a man in a red suit with horns, a tail and a pitchfork? Madre
de mentiras, no. The Devil was as my mother had described him to
me when I was little: he had a shark's head and the body of a
beautiful naked woman." He smiled. "My mother warned me to
beware the Devil. Because he is ugly? No, señor.
Because he is beautiful. It is this beauty that makes him powerful."

Croaker felt the edge
to this man. What was beneath his almost unnatural calm? "What
happened in this dream when you met the Devil?"

"I ate him."
Heitor's amber eyes twinkled with delight. "Without a moment's
hesitation, señor, I took out my scalpel and carved
his flesh into bite-size chunks. I thought it would stink of death
and putrefaction, but all I tasted was roses." He pursed his
lips. "It was raw, just like my mother taught me to eat my meat.
She said all the power in a dead thing vanishes with heat. Keep it
cool, keep it raw. Muy bueno."

Heitor timed the last
word to his action. He spun Croaker around. The heel of his hand was
jammed just beneath Croaker's chin. Two fingers of Heitor's other
hand pressed against his temple. It was just what Antonio had done
with the gunman to subdue him. It was Heta I Croaker could
do nothing more than slip his right hand in his pocket.

Now he felt a chill
invading him. It was as if he were encased in a block of ice. He
tried to move but he couldn't. The two fingers held him immobile
while Heitor's amber gaze bore into him.

Heitor's face hovered
in front of Croaker's. "Who are you to hear Antonio's
confessions? You are a messenger, nothing more. And when your message
is delivered…" He drew back and laughed. "I'll keep
you guessing as to what happens then." Abruptly, his face
darkened again. "But my brother, perhaps he has illusions.
Perhaps he sees you as more than a messenger. I should kill you now."

"Then the
message will never be delivered." There was a riddle here that
needed solving, Croaker knew. But in his current state, he couldn't
think clearly.

"I'll do it
myself!" Heitor spat this out. "That's what I've wanted all
along. I am not one to stand by like a potbellied man in middle age
and watch others hunt."

Croaker had spent the
last several moments focusing his energies on getting the fingers of
his right hand to move. One by one, they closed around the
spirit-stone. He felt the familiar warmth, a tingling radiating out
that was like the heat of a sun. And as that heat spread, the
paralysis dissipated.

A canny look suffused
Heitor's face. "Perhaps my brother wants to tell you your fate.
This is not allowed in Heta I Perhaps, though, he wishes you
to know how you will be betrayed by those closest to you. We have
seen these things; we are privy to many, many secrets of the human
heart. And, señor, let me tell you they are all
dark."

Croaker squeezed the
spirit-stone harder.

"Antonio says
that we know too much, that it is unnatural. He says knowing these
secrets that should not be known has made us what we are. I say, So
fucking what? Madre de mentiras, life is one big game to us.
Play it or die. Lose and die. Win and survive to play another day.
These are our only laws. And now, señor, you exist
under those laws. Comprende?"

"Sure, Heitor. I
comprende just fine." He pressed his right palm with
the spirit-stone in it against Heitor's flat, muscle-ridged stomach.

Heitor's amber eyes
opened wide. His lips opened, but no sound emerged. With a sweep of
his left arm, Croaker broke the other man's hold. He chopped down
hard on Heitor's clavicle, thrust his sinking body away from him, and
pulled on the slider handle.

That was a mistake.

Heitor slammed into
his waist and the two of them hit the glass slider with such force
that it shattered and they hurtled through out onto the patio paving.
Rolling over and over, they went over the concrete coping into the
pool.

Croaker went under.
The water was shallow, pale as air. He had a quick flash of Jenny's
vision of him floating facedown in shallow water. Was he approaching
the moment of his death?

He saw the underbelly
of the plastic alligator, pushed it out of the way as he broke the
surface. Heitor pulled him back under, shook him like a disobedient
dog until Croaker was overcome by vertigo. In desperation, Croaker
slammed the heel of his biomechan-ical hand underneath Heitor's jaw.
He broke free and pushed upward, gasping for air.

"Maricone,
where did you get that spirit-stone?" Heitor was smart. "I
want it!" With his free hand, he produced the scalpel. Light
spun off the wicked-looking stainless-steel blade. "No single
stone should have stopped me like that."

Croaker recalled his
recent conversation with Ross Darling when they were looking at the
UnSub file: So the murderer didn't use a saw, Croaker had
said. He severed the spinal column with just the scalpel. That
would take a lot of strength.

It would take a
goddamn bull, Darling had said.

He was so right.

The blade swept in a
shallow arc. "It doesn't belong to you. Give it to me or I'll
cut your other hand off." The blade hovered, poised. "One
quick flick of the wrist is all it will take."

Croaker had that
single moment of shock in which to act. He slammed his forehead into
the bridge of Heitor's nose. Blood gushed and Heitor reared back in
convulsive reaction. He made tiny gasping sounds like fish flopping
out of water.

Croaker rolled away
and scrambled up. Heitor reached out for him blindly and Croaker
drove a well-placed kick into his rib cage. Heitor grunted and his
face went under. Croaker put the plastic alligator between him and
Heitor as he swam toward the edge of the pool.

He turned back in
time to see Heitor swimming toward him underwater in quick, powerful
strokes.

Heitor ignored his
swollen nose, which streamed blood behind him in lovely patterns. He
brandished the scalpel. He appeared to be grinning as he slashed out
with the blade. Croaker grabbed the alligator, jammed it down. With a
loud hiss, the point of the scalpel punctured the plastic and the
alligator deflated.

Heitor rose to the
surface. Water pink with his blood sluiced off him. "Escuchame,
señor. Now you have given me what I crave. This is the
kind of hunt I can savor."

"Does it hurt,
Heitor? The broken nose."

Heitor spat blood
into the pool. "We worship pain, señor. We
welcome it. It is the validation of the hunt." He raised the
scalpel, balancing it in his palm. "When we feel pain we know
we are alive."

He waded through the
water. "Do you think you can stop me from taking your hand?"

Croaker held the
spirit-stone in front of him. "Finish it, Heitor. Now. Do it if
you can."

Inches away, Heitor
paused. He stared into Croaker's eyes. His right hand came up,
weaving the scalpel back and forth in a lazy pattern.

Croaker moved the
spirit-stone and Heitor retreated a pace. An expression of pure
hatred turned his handsome face ugly.

"I'll remember,"
he whispered as he backed away through the water. "Not now, not
yet. But soon." It was almost the lilting croon of a lullaby. He
slipped silently to the gunite steps, quickly crossed the screened-in
patio, and was gone.

Croaker let out a
long pent-up breath. He collapsed back into the water. He was sick to
his stomach from the excess adrenaline and his throat was dry. He
could see Heitor's blood drifting through the pool in strands that
parted and thinned to a light stain.

With a groan, he
pulled himself out of the pool and lay on his back on the patio
tiles. His head fell against the coping, and he closed his eyes. Each
encounter with the Bonitas seemed to take more and more out of him.
What would happen the next time they met? He didn't want to think
about that now, so he thought about Jenny. At length, he took a
couple of large beach towels and went back to the T-bird. After
spreading the towels over the seat, he got in. His shoes squooshed.

He took out his cell
phone and dialed Jenny's number. He prayed that she wasn't in
surgery.

"Hello?"

He let out an audible
sigh when he heard her voice. "Jenny, it's Lew. Look, I don't
have a lot of time so don't ask questions, but I've got some
interesting evidence regarding the Stansky situation."

"Tell me."

"I saw a copy of
his medical file on Rachel—"

"How did you—?"

"Doesn't matter.
The point is, he knew she had one kidney. He X-rayed her in September
of last year and made a notation of it. And, Jenny, he's also the
doctor of record for two murder victims who I suspect were used for
organ harvesting."

He could hear Jenny's
sharply indrawn breath. "But that alone—"

"Isn't enough. I
know. But get this. Stansky screened both of them for Human
Lymphocitic Antigens. These were healthy young women. Nobody does
antigen typing unless—"

"Unless there's
a need to match up their organs with a compatible host," Jenny
finished in a hushed voice.

He could almost hear
her shudder. "Then, time. You'd have to get the antigen typing
down ASAP so you know which patient is compatible with which organ."

"Right. What if
you had that information before the victim was killed?"

"Oh, Lew. Tell
me this isn't what's happening here."

"I'm very much
afraid it is. Our friend Dr. Stansky is hip-deep in an organ
harvesting operation. He's the scout. He matches his patients up with
the harvesters' needs. As in everything logical, it's as neat as a
pin."

There was a pause on
the line. He could hear her rapid breathing. "Lew, did Stansky
do HLA testing on Rachel?"

"Al: 52; A2: 26;
Bl: 30…" He recited all eight readings from memory.

"Oh, God, that's
Rachel's HLA profile," she said. "Why would Stansky have
done the test? He couldn't have known Rachel would be in need of a
kidney when he saw her."

That's the whole
point, Croaker thought. "Jenny, listen to me. I want you to
move Rachel. Is she too sick for that?"

"Jenny, what
happens if sepsis is being regularly reintroduced to Rachel's
system?"

"She wouldn't be
able to fight it off no matter how much antibiotics we could give
her."

"Isn't that
what's happening? Call me when Rachel's been moved," he said and
put the cell phone away.

There was something
else on his mind. He'd found Stansky's files in Trey Merli's shirts.
These shirts had just returned from the Jiffy Tyme Dry Cleaners on
Biscayne Boulevard.

Where had he heard
that name before? He considered the address on Biscayne, but he
couldn't recall where that number was.

He drove to a gas
station. Inside the kiosk, he found a wire rack of local maps. He
bought one and, along with a pair of cheap beach towels, took it out
to the car. He stood there for a moment, letting the sun bake him for
a moment. He could still feel the residue of the unnatural chill
Heitor had laid on him.

He opened up the map,
traced Biscayne Boulevard north from where he was. That's when it
clicked in his mind. Pablo Leyes had told him that his wife,
Estrella, worked on Biscayne Boulevard. At a dry cleaners named Jiffy
Tyme.

The News Cafe was
open twenty-four hours. Croaker stood in the shadows beneath the
green awning, looking out at the pinkish oyster-shell light over the
beach across Ocean Drive. It was 11:10, less than thirteen hours
before Croaker would have to put Barba-cena in the gun sight. Even
though it was before lunchtime, the restaurant was far from empty.
Models with long legs and sunglasses coming off early morning fashion
shoots were busy chainsmoking while they attacked high-cholesterol
breakfasts. In between mouthfuls, they dished other models.

Croaker was wearing
olive trousers, a pale green short-sleeve shirt of nubby linen, and
thin socks with white diamonds on them. New clothes he had bought at
a nearby boutique. His shoes still squeaked when he walked, though.
They'd need a couple of days to dry out.

Majeur arrived
without fanfare. As he parked the grape-colored Lincoln and got out
Croaker went across the street.

Majeur was dressed in
a stylized dark-blue Versace tuxedo. A white rose was pinned to his
satin lapel. Its bruised petals were stained with what appeared to be
lipstick. It was as dark as dried blood. He swung his pencil-thin
attaché case against his thigh with a kind of insouciance, as
if he were prodding a favorite horse to show its best moves.

His hatchet face had
lost none of its rich mahogany glow but tendrils of his slick,
gunmetal hair curled damply against his forehead. Obviously, Croaker
wasn't the only one sleep-deprived. But this was not an outfit
befitting a man burning the midnight oil as he collated intelligence
on Juan Garcia Barbacena and his amazing Technicolor security
machine.

Glancing at his gold
Patek Philippe watch, Majeur said, "Punctuality says much about
a man's more private habits. Good morning, sir."

"Not much of a
morning yet," Croaker said.

"But it will
be," Majeur said. "I promise you that." His eyes had
that slightly watery look people get when they've had too much to
drink.

They strolled slowly
along the beach as the heat spread upward from the baking sand. It
was like an oven.

Croaker said, "You
look like you've had quite a night."

"Some people you
just have to dress up for." Majeur offered Croaker a
chocolate-covered mint, then popped one into his mouth. "Sadly,
I believe I am approaching an age when too much champagne sours the
stomach."

"It always did.
But when you're young you just don't care."

Majeur seemed to roll
that thought around with the mint, "That is true. The
destruction occurs early. The body, morals—they both suffer
beneath the onslaught of life."

With a small frisson
Croaker realized the lawyer was talking about himself. "The body
has gravity to contend with," he said. "But as for morals—"

"As for morals,"
Majeur continued, "they suffer from each roll of the dice. Life
is a gamble, sir, a discordant dance against the odds. No lasting
good ever came from that."

Croaker had an
intuition that life for Majeur had been reduced to a relationship
with one person: his client. "Is that where you were last night?
Visiting the gambler?"

"I am never far
from him. He and I have become like Siamese twins."

"hi that event,
when one dies what do you think will happen to the other?"

Majeur slipped off
the gold marriage band from the third finger of his left hand. He
turned it around contemplatively on the tips of his slender fingers.
"When one takes the first step on a path, señor,
one often fails to grasp what may lie at the end. This, I think, is a
state necessary to impel one onward." Light shone off the gold
band as he slowly turned it. "Sacrifice is the essential
building block of life, sir. Small ones, large ones
and—occasionally—one so profound that one cannot possibly
be aware of its consequences." He held the gold band up. "You
see this ring, señor. It represents nine years of my
life. A life imagined, it seems now, by someone unknown to me."
He lofted the ring. Flying through the glistening morning, it joined
the white-green breakers sinking into the sand. "Now, like those
waves, that dream has gone and another one has taken its place."

"I'll tell you
something, Majeur," Croaker said. "It's damn hard to work
up sympathy for the man who's extorting me."

The lawyer laughed,
that high-pitched curiously feminine sound. "I agree. Besides
giving me a sour stomach, too much champagne makes me maudlin. I
detest people who are maudlin, don't you?" Majeur gave him a
crooked smile. "But my maundering highlights an oddity." He
took out a cigar in a metal sheath, looked at it for a moment, then,
apparently reconsidering, put it back inside his tuxedo jacket. "You
see, unlike you, I understand that a relationship has sprung up
between us."

"Sort of like
the rapport between torturer and the tortured."

Majeur laughed again.
"I will say, considering you aren't an attorney, you certainly
have a way with words, señor," He rubbed at the
place on his finger where the wedding band had been. "But who is
to say who is the torturer and who is the tortured?"

Croaker paused, aware
that Majeur had just told him something important.

"Majeur—"

"I think, sir,
that time makes fools of us all." Majeur shook his head as if
trying to clear out the excess of champagne he'd consumed. "To
work, señor. We have promises to keep." The
pause had been fatal. The tenuous thread that had, a moment before,
seemed to connect them, had vanished. "And a subject to send
down before we sleep."

Majeur unsnapped his
attaché, extracted a small manila envelope, two folded
blueprints, and a sheaf of onionskin papers held together with a
white paper clip. He handed them over.

The papers were
filled with single-spaced typewritten paragraphs of text; the
envelope contained a dozen black-and-white photos, each with a name
on the back. The photos bore the mark of the surveillance camera.
They were grainy, the subjects imposed, on the run.

"It is all
there, señor. Everything you need."

Croaker studied the
top photo. He saw a remarkably young man with thick, pitch black
hair, a disarmingly dimpled smile, and eyes as sharp as a falcon's.
Not a handsome man, but in this case it made no difference. The face
was virile, strong in every sense of the word. This was Juan Garcia
Barbacena.

"The subject has
a fascination for exotic food, spices, two-wheeled vehicles, and sex.
In this country, he travels in convoy." Ever security conscious,
Majeur would not utter Barbacena's name in public. "He is driven
in a bulletproof gray Rolls-Royce. Two black Mercedes sedans in
front, two behind. He has nine men with him at all times—professional
bodyguards. Four drive the Mercs, four ride shotgun, one drives the
Rolls. Also, there's a woman who's a food taster." Majeur's
nicotine-stained teeth shone like buttered kernels of corn as he
smiled. "He's like a Roman Caesar, you see. He has paid for his
absolute power with paranoia."

"An accurate
observation, sir." Majeur snapped his attaché shut.
"Which is why we have chosen you to kiss him down." He shot
the cuffs of his white tuxedo shirt, subtly adjusting the gold and
lapis cufflinks. "The bodyguards run in four six-hour shifts.
That way, they're always fresh and alert."

"What about the
food taster?"

"She's Thai,"
Majeur observed. "She sleeps curled like a cat at his side when
he has no need of her."

"Sex?"

"Her talents lie
elsewhere." Majeur looked out across the beach to where a
beautiful golden lab leapt to catch a Frisbee tossed by his master.
Majeur stopped, apparently not wanting to get too close. They sat on
a bench, like the old men who, later in the day, would be hunched,
chins on their canes, watching with rheumy eyes the topless girls,
dreaming of being nineteen again.

"For him,
business invariably comes first. But sex is an imperative."
Majeur smelled of tequila and a floral scent that did not belong to
him. "He travels with three girls. Like a harem. It's a crap
shoot as to which one he will choose. Sometimes it's more than one at
once."

"Lucky man,"
Croaker said.

Majeur put his head
back to observe a sky rich in color. "Not today."

Croaker consulted the
written material. "I see he stays at unconventional places."

"No hotels,
that's right. He owns a building here in Miami Beach and another in
Miami. Warehouses. At least, that's what they appear to be. On the
inside, they have been completely remodeled to his
specifications—opulent bedroom suites, conference rooms, and
business lounges with all the latest high-tech computer gear and
satellite uplinks. This way, he can have the run of the place,
position his bodyguards for maximum security, and no one knows about
it."

"I see you have
the building plans here." Croaker unfolded the blueprints.
"They're accurate?"

"Absolutely
up-to-date."

Croaker looked down
the beach to where the golden lab was leaping in an expression of
absolute joy through the surf. "There's only one thing
remaining."

Majeur nodded.
"Whatever you need, sir, I can get."

Croaker put a hand in
his pocket. "A long gun. A Steyr—"

"Just a moment."
Majeur held up his hand. He reached into his breast pocket and took
out his wallet and an ultraslim gold pen. He flipped open the wallet,
turned over a business card, and prepared to jot down Croaker's
specifications.

But Croaker was aware
of these small movements only peripherally. His gaze was caught by
the wallet. It was long and slim—a European-style wallet made
of crocodile hide. In low light it might have passed for black, but
in the morning's bright sun Croaker could see it was a very dark
blue. It was the wallet Rachel had described in her diary. The wallet
owned by the man Dr. Ronald Stansky had brought to their last S-M
session, who had watched them perform. Majeur was Trey Merli.

"Go on, señor.
I'm waiting."

Croaker cleared his
throat and focused his mind. All sorts of thoughts were running
rampant through his head. What the hell kind of conspiracy had he
stumbled into? He made himself go on. "I want a Steyr SSG .308
with a Swarsky scope and a Harris Bipod. Tape-wrapped stock, serial
number filed off."

"Done.
Ammunition?"

"One box will be
sufficient."

"Is there
anything else?"

"Binoculars.
Zeiss ten by fifty-six Night Owl." But in truth Croaker had only
half his mind on these details.

Majeur nodded.
"Delivery of the equipment, señor." The
edge of his Versace tux jacket was flapping against his thigh.
"Eight-thirty tonight at—"

"No. I'll tell
you where, Majeur."

The lawyer inclined
his head. "As you wish, sir."

"The bar of the
Raleigh Hotel."

"A delightful
place." A thin smile wrinkled his lips. "I applaud your
choice." Then, like ice splintering under a heavy footstep, his
expression changed. "Señor, I sound a single
note of warning. Do not mistake our rapport for a weakness on my
part. I know what you tried to do on the UNOS system. You are locked
out of the kidney until such time as I am satisfied you have
fulfilled your end of the bargain. You cannot get it, you will
not get it, until the subject's heart has ceased to beat."

"And how will
you know it's been done?"

Majeur tilted back
his head. "Oh, señor, I will know. I'm paid to
know."

Croaker watched the
lawyer walk back to his car and drive off. Sand rattled against his
shoes. He thought about the crocodile hide wallet. He thought of
Majeur watching Rachel and Stansky go through their sexual catechism.

He might be Marcellus
Rojas Diego Majeur, attorney-at-law. But he was also Trey Merli,
owner of Gold Coast Exotic Auto Rental in Margate.

When the
grape-colored Lincoln had disappeared, Croaker walked slowly back
beneath the green awning of the News Cafe and ordered a fresh orange
juice with a large squeeze of lime, two eggs over easy with salsa,
and a double order of bacon.

Heitor had called him
a messenger. What had he meant by that? What message did Croaker have
and who was he delivering it to? Croaker took his juice and sat at a
table. His aches and pains were now too numerous to keep track of so
he turned his mind elsewhere. He sipped his juice and let the
vibrance of SoBe wash over him.

While he was
otherwise engaged, life had begun to creep into Ocean Drive.
Professionals—camera- and sound-men—swung into the
restaurant for Cokes and muffins, burly boys in string tops offloaded
sparkling fresh produce from trucks, tourists took pictures of one
another with the trademark awning behind them. The air smelled of
root vegetables, cilantro, and makeup. A jaunty Jack Russell terrier
trotted by, followed by a woman in a bikini and inline skates. The
day was, at last, in full swing.

4

The manta moved
through the green water as languidly as a sun worshipper. So big it
seemed as unreal as a cloud, it sucked plankton up into its wide
mouth like some alien vacuum cleaner. Seen from above, it was black
as pitch, its long horned fins extending in front, its whiplike tail
undulating behind.

Following it, Croaker
and Rafe Roubinnet, in scuba gear, swam in wide ellipses. They rose
and fell as if on columns of air, but really, they were riding the
same current as the fish.

The Spanish manto
meant cloak, and that was what this beast most resembled. Gold flecks
glittered on its rough skin as the edges of its wings rippled. But
when Croaker sank down, diving deeper into the water, he could see
that its belly was as pale as ice shining in dawn light. Bennie and
Majeur were just like this ray, pulling a manto around them
to hide what lay beneath.

Rafe touched
Croaker's arm, pointed to his watch, then gestured upward. The
speargun, attached to his wrist by a short nylon cord, fluttered
through the water in concert like an admonishing finger. Time to
leave. Croaker nodded, waggled his clear fins, and began his ascent
to the surface.

Long before he got
there, he could see the dark shadow of Rafe's catamaran. Glancing
back down through the green water, Croaker could see the manta,
dwindling into its dark, unfathomable world. Part of him longed to be
taken by it, down and down into another realm. And with it, all the
obligations that weighed upon his soul like a lead casing. Vanished
in the darkness of another place.

Croaker breached the
surface. Bright sunlight bounced off the water, almost blinding him.
They handed up their tanks, weight belts, fins, and spearguns to a
waiting crewman.

They climbed up the
rope ladder, slippery with salt and seaweed. The polished, sun-washed
foredeck felt good beneath Croaker's bare feet. The dive had somehow
renewed him, as Rafe had promised it would.

They stripped off
their masks and shorties—neoprene wet suits with short sleeves
and legs. All they wore were bathing suits. Rafe clucked like a
mother hen over the deep purple and green bruises that spotted
Croaker's skin.

"Christ, you
need a good long vacation." He threw Croaker an oversize towel.

Croaker dabbed
gingerly at his body. "Hell, this is my vacation."

Rafe Roubinnet's boat
was a beautiful sixty-five-foot handmade cat. Made of carbon fiber,
the same strong but lightweight material as Dennis Conner's America's
Cup boat, it was sloop-rigged, which meant it had a single mast.
There was a cabin—or house—mounted on aluminum struts
above the water and between the two huge pontoons. The foredeck was
made of a thin sheet of West System epoxy resin, painted glistening
white with gold piping like the rest of the boat. Aft of the house
was a nylon webbing for the crew of four to cross from pontoon to
pontoon. The wheels were set into cockpits scooped out of the aft
section of the pontoons. There were two wheels because the cat had
twin screws—a pair of mammoth gas engines, five hundred
horsepower Chevy hemis, typically seen beneath the hoods of racing
cars—for use when Rafe wanted to motor-sail or needed to outrun
a storm. The twin screws gave the cat another advantage: they made it
highly maneuverable. It was the kind of boat you would feel
comfortable in even if you went all the way up to Newport, Rhode
Island.

A small folding table
had been set up on the foredeck. It was covered with a homey
blue-and-white checkered cloth. The cloth had pockets on the corners,
each filled with a small lead weight to keep it battened down.
Croaker could see that the ends of the table legs fit into specially
made depressions in the deck so it wouldn't shift in the swells. They
sat on canvas captain's chairs with gold anchors silk-screened on the
backs, drying and warming, eating fresh stone crabs, Caesar salad,
and warm garlic bread. There was beer and champagne in a large metal
cooler, but Croaker opted for club soda.

They ate in
companionable silence for some time. When he thought enough time had
passed, Croaker said, "When did you and Bennie part company?"

It was obviously a
delicate subject so he was not particularly surprised when Rafe said:
"I'd rather not talk about Bennie."

"But I would,"
Croaker pressed.

Rafe gave Croaker a
long look while he munched on a forkful of salad. "Always the
detective, eh, compadre?" He nodded. "Okay, you're
right."

"He got pissed
you wouldn't run for mayor again."

"Pissed?"
Rafe snorted. "Hell, compadre, he went ballistic. He
had big plans, which is why he'd offered to help finance my campaign
in a major way." Rafe shrugged. "Maybe he wanted Miami to
become a safe haven for his clients; maybe he had something grander
in mind. With Bennie it's always something grander. But, really it
didn't matter because I cut the discussion short. It was simple. I
was quits with politics. Bennie, apparently, didn't agree."

"But it's more
than that," Croaker said. "You told me you don't like the
company he keeps."

"By and large,
that's true." Rafe threw down some shell and sighed. He leaned
back, his captain's chair tipped on its rear legs. "The truth is
Bennie's a user, compadre. He makes friends for a reason,
and that reason is to benefit Benito Milagros. He has this amoral
streak. It's what makes him irresistible to a great many women. And I
can understand that. There's a certain rush in watching somebody
cleverly circumvent the law."

"I don't like
the sound of that, compadre." A certain tension had
come into the tall man's frame. "Does this have something to do
with Juan Garcia Barbacena?"

Croaker hitched his
chair forward. "It has everything to do with Barbacena. At
midnight I'm going to put my head beneath the guillotine."

Rafe's chair came
crashing down onto all four legs. "That's when Barbacena's
landing in Miami."

The two men looked at
each other for a long time. Sunlight spangled the ocean. A pair of
cormorants flew by, heading for land. For his part, Croaker wanted to
go the other way. Down and down, following the manta, until the
thought of the city and what he had to do tonight vanished. But
Rachel wouldn't let him. His tail—the electrical cord—was
plugged into her hospital monitors. He couldn't let her life signs
flatline.

Rafe shook his head.
"Barbacena's a hardened criminal. I've got no qualms on that
score. No, the world will be a far better place without him. I'll
help you. Even though I know his death will make Bennie one very
happy hombre."

In the ensuing
silence, Croaker could hear the blood coursing through his veins. The
pounding of his heart was almost painful. The boat rocked a little on
gathering swells.

Very softly, Croaker
said, "Did you know that Bennie works for the U.S. Government?
He's running Barbacena in a sanctioned operation in Mexico."

"It doesn't
surprise me to hear this. He's in the company of thieves, compadre."

"Quite a bit
worse," Croaker said. "But if Barbacena's working for him
why would Bennie want him dead?"

Rafe stood up. "Let's
take a stroll." They went forward. The boat had lifted anchor
after they'd come back on board. It was running lightly before the
wind, more or less paralleling the coast. They stood looking out at
the green-blue water, dotted with fishing and pleasure boats.
"Compadre, you must have had a mentor. A rabbi, I think
they call it in New York, no?"

Croaker nodded.

"Of course,"
Rafe said. "If he's smart, every man, when he is young, finds a
rabbi to learn from. I am no exception. And neither is Bennie."
He clamped his hands together. "After a time, the ties that bind
you to your rabbi run very deep. You understand. It's an intimate
relationship unlike any other; you and your rabbi come to share
strengths—and fears. Now think of your rabbi. Imagine he has a
daughter. She is a beautiful creature, very strong in many ways, weak
in others. Like all women, she is enigmatic."

Rafe was staring out
at the creamy wake. "All right, then. This young woman meets a
man and falls in love with him. He is strong, clever, charismatic.
But he is the wrong man for her. Your rabbi knows this; you know
this. But nothing can convince her. 'Love conquers all,' she insists.
I know him. I will change him.'"

Rafe stirred, as if
in a dream. "Tragic words. But, then, love can be terribly
tragic, compadre. Verdad?"

"Yes,"
Croaker said. "It's the truth."

Rafe folded his arms
over his browned chest. "Well, then, events transpire with the
chilling inevitability of fate. They marry. The man loves her for a
time. He abuses her, as well. But hope persists inside her. More time
passes. He ignores her, cheats on her. One could say she takes the
abuse and the indifference with a degree of stoicism. It is also
possible that she mistakes fear for hope. Then everything changes.
When she finds out about the mistress, something snaps inside her.
Her strength comes to the fore, and rashly, she confronts him. And
for her efforts she is murdered."

"He beats her,
then strangles her with an electrical cord," Croaker said. Long
before Rafe had come to the end of this morality tale, Croaker had
known that he was speaking about Juan Garcia and Theresa Marquesa
Barbacena.

When they returned to
the table, they found the dishes had been cleared. They had been
replaced by bowls of watermelon chunks, mango slices, and papaya
halves. A silver thermos of coffee stood in the center, next to a
plate of lime wedges.

Rafe leaned over the
table, squeezed the juice from several wedges onto the fresh fruit.
The gaily colored table was between them.

"Rafe, I found
out that Bennie's paying the bill for Majeur's cell phone."

"I'm sure that's
not all he's paying for." Rafe dished out the fruit.

"But I know
Majeur is working for the Bonitas," Croaker said. "It
doesn't make sense that Bennie hired him to coerce me into settling
his score with Barbacena. It's the Bonitas who have access to the
kidney Rachel needs."

Rafe steepled his
fingers. "Unless Majeur is working for Bennie and the
Bonitas without any of them knowing." He grunted. "That
would be just like Bennie. Devious to a fault. And don't forget, they
all come from the same region in Asuncion. They know one another
well."

Croaker thought about
this for some time. "So it's possible Bennie put my niece's life
at risk."

"A sad day,
compadre." Rafe handed a plate to Croaker.
"Disillusionment is a barbed little pill that sticks in your
throat." He poured steaming black coffee into sea mugs, weighted
at their wide bottoms. "But life must go on, isn't it so?"

Croaker nodded, his
eyes hooded. "One thing bothers me, though. Bennie has a large
and complex operation going. Barbacena is the spearhead. Why would
Bennie contract to have him eliminated now? Why not wait until the
operation has been completed?"

"I can think of
several reasons." Rafe tapped his fingertips together. "With
Barbacena coming here to Miami, he's at his most vulnerable now.
Afterward, who knows, he might vanish back into some South American
jungle. Then again, word is Barbacena's taken some dubious risks
recently. In the process he's made enemies in high places. That would
be a grave liability to someone in Bennie's position."

Croaker considered
these things as he ate some fruit. It was cool and sweet and tart all
at the same time. He thought about Bennie.

What was the real
motivation for his actions? Who knew what a man with such a restless
spirit really wanted?

Rafe shrugged. "I'm
unfamiliar with the new players. The benefits of retirement,
compadre. But you can bet there's someone. It's only good
business. You never fire an employee without having already hired his
replacement."

The same crewman who
served lunch emerged from the cabin with Croaker's cell phone.

"Call for you,
Mr. Croaker," the young man said, handing over the phone.

"Lew?" He
heard Jenny Marsh's voice in his ear and he walked to the far rail.

"Hi," he
said. "How are you making out?" The wind whistling around
him made it impossible to hear. He told her to hold on while he went
into the house.

"Are you okay?"
Jenny said as he closed the door behind him. "The way you cut
off the last call—"

"It couldn't be
helped." His heart constricted at the anxiety in her voice. "I
was calling from a place I shouldn't have been in. I'm fine now."
He was alone in the main salon, and he sat on a built-in sofa. "What
about Rachel?"

"Rachel and I
are at Jackson Memorial," she said.

"That was
quick."

"I used a
medevac helicopter. It was the only way. The ambulance ride would
have done her no good at all. What do you mean you're fine now."

Nothing could get
past this woman, he thought. "I tripped and fell into a pool, is
all. It was nothing, believe me."

"Damn you, I
don't believe you."

He knew she was
thinking of the spirit-stone vision. He cut her short. "Stansky?"

"In the dark and
he'll stay that way," Jenny said. "I gave explicit
instructions at the Royal Poinciana Dialysis unit. He won't be told
anything. Anyway, he doesn't come in until about six in the evening."

He stared out at a
tanker moving slowly along the horizon. He didn't want to tell her
that with Stansky's connections, the doctor could easily find out
where Jenny had taken Rachel. That wasn't the immediate problem he
was facing, however. Everything seemed to be coming down to a matter
of timing. "And Matty?"

"Your sister's
okay. I told her we lacked equipment that Rachel now needed. That got
her anxious, of course, but I managed to settle her down. I told her
Jackson's better able to handle the transplant."

"As long as
she's calm. The last thing we need is for her to be calling Stansky
now."

"She won't. She
trusts me. Rachel's now my patient."

"Great."

"Now do you mind
telling me what the hell is going on?"

"No problem.
Just as soon as I get there. Until then, I want you to keep a close
eye on the infection."

"Already being
done hour by hour. I could read you that far."

"You're a whiz."
He looked at his watch. It was just after three. "I'll be there
by five. Until then, no one gets in to see Rachel except you and
Matty. Okay?"

"Of course."
There was a brief hesitation. "Lew, you're scaring the hell out
of me. I'm going to get hospital security up here right now."

"A sensible
precaution," he said. "Sit tight. And try not to worry."

"Oh, right. That
will be a breeze."

He did his best to
ignore her sarcasm. "One more thing, Jenny. Sometime in the next
couple of hours I'm going to give you a call. I'm going to say, Go.
That's it: Go. When I do, I want you to have Matty call Stansky. Have
her tell him where Rachel's been moved."

"Are you nuts?"

"You'll
understand when I get there. Just do it, Jenny. Okay?"

"No, it's not
okay. You're going to have to do a lot better than that."

Through a window, he
watched Rafe speaking to one of the crew. Croaker could imagine other
crewmen scrambling in the aft netting, rerigging the sail as the boat
came about. "I need him to verify this theory. Your monitoring
the infection level will hopefully do part of it, but only Stansky
can provide the other half. I need my hands on him, but at the time
and place of my choosing."

"Right. Okay. I
can understand that. I have the same suspicions about him you have.
When you get here we'll compare notes." She sounded at least
partially mollified.

"Sounds good.
Jenny, I'm glad you're with Rachel."

"Me, too."
She hesitated a moment. "Lew, will you swear to me you're all
right?"

"Except for a
couple of more scrapes and bruises I'm fine. Really. See you soon."

The house was divided
into a number of cabins, some separated by bulkheads. To one side of
the main salon was a half-bulkhead—a serving counter behind
which was the compact but highly efficient galley gleaming with
stainless steel and copper. At the far end of the salon was a head.
One of two doors led to the master stateroom with its own head, the
other to a short corridor ending in two other cabins that could be
used as offices during the day and as guest bedrooms at night. The
crew was quartered in berths within the pontoons.

A crewman entered,
bringing a tray back to the galley. Because the bulkheads were thin,
Croaker went all the way back into the head off Rafe's stateroom.

Inside the cramped
space, he dialed Ronald Stansky's West Palm Beach office. The
receptionist told him in her crisp, indifferent voice that the doctor
was at clinic today and did he need the number. Croaker said he did.
He broke the connection and dialed it.

He identified himself
to Stansky as Juan Hidalgo. He spoke in a combination of Spanish and
badly fractured English; a man like Stansky would disdain having to
learn Spanish even though he worked part-time at a clinic. Something
to do with a pain in his lower abdomen, he told the doctor. Stansky
finally got it. Continuing in Juan Hidalgo's laborious manner,
Croaker told Stansky that he was at work and it might take him an
hour to get there. The doctor assured him he'd wait.

With the knowledge
that Stansky was firmly in place for the next couple of hours, he
called Jenny and gave her Stansky's clinic number. He put the cell
phone away.

Just as he reached
for the door to the head, the cat lurched in a swell and he slid
sideways. He was stopped from falling against a bulkhead because the
circular rag rug on the floor did not give. Curious, he knelt down.
Peeling back an edge, he saw that it was quite cleverly "tacked"
down with Velcro strips. He was about to replace the section of rug
when he noticed something beneath it on the floor.

Peeling back more, he
discovered a circular cover cut into the floor surrounded by a thick
rubber gasket seal. In its center was a small metal wheel. Had it
been open, the circle was just large enough for a hefty man to fit
through. After a moment's thought, Croaker flattened the rug back
onto its Velcro mounts and emerged from the head.

He fetched the plans
of Barbacena's converted warehouses Majeur had given him and went
back out onto the foredeck. He spread the plans on the table, placing
bowls and sea mugs on the corners to keep the wind from ripping them.

"This top one is
the Miami residence," he said.

Rafe took a good look
at it. "You're kidding, right? This is locked up like Fort Knox.
I don't see any way in."

"But I do,"
Croaker said. His forefinger stabbed out. "You see here, where
the electrical conduit comes through the basement from the street.
Normally, there's no egress. But when Barbacena renovated he needed
an army of lines for his computers, satellite feeds, what have you.
That's way over what had been intended when the building was built.
They had to put in several relay boosters. And that means access."

"I don't see any
boosters here. I see a freezer and a prefab wine cellar."

"Take another
look."

Rafe peered more
closely at the plan.

"See the erasure
marks?"

Rafe traced his
finger over the spot. "I see 'em."

"What was erased
were three letters: FPL."

Rafe looked up at
him. "Florida Power and Light."

Croaker nodded.

"I know
everybody there," Rafe said. "All it will take is one call
to verify the access." But he made no move toward the house.
Instead, he rolled up the top sheet, revealing the plan for the Miami
Beach warehouse. He scanned it briefly. "Same layout here,
basically. Both these places are death traps. Even if you get in
undetected, even if you get to Barbacena without being caught or
killed, you'll never get out alive. See, my first week in office I
got a crash course in assassinations and security. One of those
subjects that's fascinating and terrifying at the same time."

Croaker nodded. "So
what we're looking at here is a suicide mission."

"If you try to
do it this way, there's no doubt of it." Rafe glanced from the
plans to Croaker. "Maybe that's what Bennie wants."

"That's occurred
to me."

Rafe sat back down in
a captain's chair. "Then we've got to come up with an
alternative." He steepled his fingers. "When I was mayor, I
drove my security handlers crazy. Why? Because I was outside so much.
Snipers, they kept moaning. A sniper is how they got to JFK, they
complained. It's how they got to King and Bobby Kennedy. The outdoors
is their worst nightmare." He looked at Croaker. "I may
have made these guys nuts, but I took everything they said very damn
seriously. They knew their business." He leaned forward, tapped
the plans emphatically. "Forget this stuff. Unless you're one of
the Mario Brothers, you'll never get through to him. It's outdoors
where you've got to make your move."

"Great minds
think alike," Croaker said. "As it happens, Barba-cena's a
vegetarian. Very strict about it. Also, traveling makes him hungry.
According to my information, the first thing he does when he
disembarks is eat."

"Hmm. There are
damn few vegetarian restaurants in the area."

"Even fewer that
are still serving at midnight," Croaker said, thinking of the
short list provided in the material Majeur had given him.

Rafe's expression
broke into a smile. "Ay de mi. If we can pin down where
Barbacena will have his midnight snack, you can take him."

Rafe's words were
like a beacon in the night. It was reassuring to know that he agreed
with Croaker's own assessment of the situation. Croaker recited the
list of vegetarian restaurants he'd memorized.

"There's only
one that serves after midnight," Rafe said with a wolfish grin.
"An Chay. Asian food in a rain forest setting. Very trendy. It's
on Ninth and Washington in SoBe."

"That's where
Barbacena will be," Croaker said. He turned abruptly away,
almost stumbling to the far rail. There he stood, his back to Rafe
and the crew, staring down at his biomechanical hand. I'm racing
toward midnight, he thought. I have no more time to evade
the inevitable. He wrapped his flesh-and-blood fingers around
the cool metal at the base of his artificial hand.

A moment later he
felt a presence behind him. "Compadre, it's always like
this." Rafe's voice was soft on the sea breeze. "At the
eleventh hour is when all the old doubts and fears start piling up.
They'll cripple you if you give into them."

Rafe stopped. He was
close enough to Croaker now to see what Croaker was doing. Slowly and
deliberately, Croaker pressed a series of five small buttons on the
inside of his left wrist. He waited three seconds, then pressed them
again in another order. Then he gave the biomechanical hand a sharp
twist to the left. It came off. He cradled it in his right hand.

"You know, when
I was in Southeast Asia I saw an old man display a krait just this
way." Croaker looked at Rafe. "Do you know about kraits,
Rafe? No? They're snakes of the genus Bungarus, the most
highly venomous in the world. This old man handled them every day of
his life. I often wondered whether it occurred to him that all it
would take was one misstep, one bite, and he'd be dead."

Croaker turned his
biomechanical hand over so that it was palm up, the fingers, curled,
seemingly at rest. "In the old man's grip, the krait seemed as
harmless as this hand." He held up the hand so the sunlight
fired the metallic blue. "And beautiful. They're banded in
fantastic colors. But it would be a mistake to think that kraits were
anything other than deadly."

A kind of sadness
touched Rafe's handsome face. "Compadre, those Jap
techno-surgeons sure knew what they were doing when they gave you
that hand. The things it can do!"

Neither of them cared
to look at the stub of his wrist with its stainless-steel collar, its
grooves and whorls, micromotors, calibrated rods and fibers. This was
too intimate a sight, like another man's genitals.

"A bit. It's as
much a part of me as my flesh-and-blood hand." Croaker looked
away. "Each moment it becomes more concrete. I'm shown
Barbacena's photo. Now he's a real person instead of a name in a
file. You and I work on penetration and now I know exactly where
he'll be in the first few minutes past midnight." He jerked his
head in disgust. "It's hit me, Rafe. Up until this moment I've
been finding more and more elaborate ways of fooling myself. I'd
split myself into two distinct people. Out of self-preservation. It
wouldn't be me who looked through the sniper scope, I kept telling
myself. It wouldn't be me who centered Juan Garcia Barbacena in the
crosshairs. It would be someone else who pulled the trigger and blew
his head off. But now the self-deception has cracked like so many
mirrors. Behind it all, there's only me."

He stared bleakly
into the sun-dazzle on the water. "Come midnight it will be my
eye in the sight, my finger on the Steyr's hair trigger. My
decision to exert that last bit of pressure. Until I hear the
familiar percussion in my ears, feel the recoil absorbed by my right
pectoral muscle."

He was gripping his
biomechanical hand so tightly his fingers seemed white and bloodless.
"Yes. Barbacena will die. Rachel will have her kidney. And I
will have to wake up tomorrow morning and realize the terrible price
I've paid to be the master of life and death."

"This pain you
feel now, I admit it can't be minimized. But the deed is worth doing,
compadre. Deep down, you know that. This is an evil man. For
what he has done, for what he will do, he deserves to die." Rafe
gripped his shoulder. "And when you see your niece recovered,
when you see the smile on her lovely face, whatever doubts still
linger will disappear like so much rain."

Would they? Croaker
wondered. He wished he was as sure of that as Rafe was.

Nevertheless, Rafe
was right about one thing. He reattached the hand, swinging it onto
the stainless-steel grooves on the outer circumference of his wrist
stub. Working the buttons, he realigned his nerves and tendons with
the conduits running through the biome-chanical interior. He flexed
the titanium and polycarbonate fingers, extruded the stainless-steel
nails, retracted them. The truth he was stuck with was this: curse or
gift, he didn't feel complete without this appendage.

He stared at the
skyline of Miami looming ever larger as they headed into shore.
Sunlight emblazoned the high-rises, turning them the color of brass.
Like brass, they had been beaten into shape by the society of man.
Just as he had, forged on the anvil of venality and betrayal.

He realized it wasn't
only for the murder of his would-be killer he'd sought sanctuary at
the Surfers' church last night. It was for the deliberate act of
cold-blooded murder he was bound to commit tonight.

Croaker was in the
T-bird on his way to Jackson Memorial when he noticed the flashing
lights of a Metro-Dade patrol car behind him. He glanced at the
speedometer even though he knew he hadn't been exceeding the limit.
The last thing he needed was to be pulled over by an overzealous cop.
But that was just what was happening.

He rolled to a stop
at the curb and waited while the patrol car nosed in behind him.
There was a space of maybe fifteen feet between the tail of the
T-bird and the nose of Chevy patrol car. Lights revolved, flashing;
traffic passed. Nothing happened.

That was okay. The
cop was on the phone, checking the registration of the T-bird.
Standard operating procedure.

Croaker was looking
at the windshield of the cop car in his rear-view mirror when his
cell phone rang. Probably Jenny, telling him that hospital security
was in place. But it wasn't Jenny.

"Lew, am I glad
I got hold of you." Rocky Saguas's voice buzzed in his ear. He
was one of Croaker's contacts, a detective lieutenant in charge of a
squad at the Metro-Dade Police.

"Not as glad as
I am to hear from you. I got one of your flyswat-ters sitting on my
tail."

"Now?"

Croaker kept his eyes
on the rearview mirror. "Even as we speak."

"This is not
good," Saguas fretted. "Not any fucking good at all."

Croaker sat up
straighter in his seat. "What's up, Rock?"

"I don't know
what the fuck is going on but I sure don't like it. I just got back
to the office and I find this priority bulletin come across the wire.
From the FBI. It's a request to pick you up and hold you in isolation
for transfer to fed authority."

An icy ball was
forming in the pit of Croaker's stomach. Feds. The ACTF must be
desperate. Opening up their search for him to local law enforcement
would inevitably cause questions to be asked. Questions they'd rather
not answer. Which was why the order included the "iso"
designation. They wanted him in strict isolation until they got their
hands on him.

"They give you
cause?" Croaker asked.

"Says here
you're wanted for questioning concerning the death of Vonda Shepherd.
Bullshit, I say," Saguas went on. "I pulled the file. This
Shepherd girl, she was blonde, Cauc, twenty-six. Worked at Gold Coast
Exotic Auto Rentals in Margate. I made some calls, reached out to the
uniform who caught the B and E squeal. Said he found her head. Like
off the fucking body, man. It was a goddamn horror movie. He barfed
his lunch all over his nice shiny shoes."

As Croaker watched,
the door of the patrol car opened and a pair of shiny boots emerged.

"It wasn't me,
Rock. I didn't whack her."

"Of course you
didn't. But you musta done something. There's a shit storm of
activity around here and it's all armed at you."

A heavyset young cop
was attached to those shiny boots. He had a grim, lantern jaw and
short blond hair sparkling with sweat in the heat. His right hand was
on the butt of his service revolver. It was impossible to look behind
his reflective aviator sunglasses to guess his intent. Which was the
point. In any case, he was heading toward Croaker with the
determination of a tank.

"Lew?"

Croaker said nothing.
He was watching the attitude of the cop and thinking how his options
were rapidly shrinking. He was like a spelunker exploring a cave. The
deeper he went, the narrower the next cavern became until now he
found himself wedged in on all sides by solid rock.

"Lew?" It
was Rocky's voice. "You still there?"

"Yeah."

"Well, don't be.
I mean to say, get the hell out of my jurisdiction and do it pronto.
This bulletin has highest priority. No choice here, buddy. I gotta
put every man I can spare on it. Get me?"

"Sure,"
Croaker said. "But what about this flycatcher stuck to me?"

"Maybe he hasn't
gotten this info yet. Gimme the tag number of his vehicle."

Croaker strained in
his seat to read the plate in the mirror. From his days in the NYPD,
he was used to reading reversed images.
"Three-johnson-caroline-rune-forty-four," he read off.

"Hold on."

Sunlight spun crazily
off the young cop's wire-rimmed sunglasses, making him look like a
robot, intimidating, inhuman. Cops cultivated an edge like that. You
needed whatever advantage you could get when at any moment a
semiautomatic might be shoved in your face. Anything that might make
the perp say, Not this one, he's too tough. Let's move on.
The young cop was taking his time, sizing up the situation, just like
they taught you in the academy.

In the mirror,
Croaker watched the cop put his hand on the trunk of the T-bird.
Maybe he thought Vonda's dead body was in there. Croaker kept himself
very still, but his heart rate was already elevated. "Rock, I
think he's made me. I've run out of time."

The cop's two-way
radio squawked. Croaker could hear the word "Urgent!" The
cop paused, turned his head. He hesitated a moment, bending down to
peer through the T-bird's window at Croaker. "You," he
ordered, "stay put!" Then he trotted back to his car and
leaned in.

"I got him on
the two-way," Saguas said. "Burn rubber."

"Thanks, Rock. I
owe you."

"Yeah. You do,"
Saguas said. "But that'll be another story." He hesitated
just an instant. "Lew, take care, okay?"

Croaker took one last
look at the cop. He was standing beside the patrol car, speaking into
the mike while he stared at the back of the T-bird. Croaker slammed
the T-bird in gear, jammed his foot on the accelerator, and took off
down the street.

He had to will
himself not to look in the rearview mirror. It was all he could do to
maneuver through the traffic at high speed. Down here, nearer the
hospital complex, there was a very high percentage of elderly
drivers. No one was going fast.

Except him.

A siren screamed
behind him. The patrol car was coming fast, its revolving lights
panicking the Q-Tips behind the wheels of the intervening cars.
Croaker turned right, then right again. The patrol car came on.
Croaker pushed the T-bird through a narrow gap between a red Toyota
and a refrigerated truck. Using the truck as camouflage, he made a
sharp left. Turning left again, he was back on NW Seventh Avenue. The
patrol car was coming, but he had a moment's respite. Enough to
formulate an emergency plan.

He cruised to a stop
at a red light and took a long look at the oncoming traffic along the
cross street. Once he got a sense of the traffic flow he saw it was
going to be uncomfortably close.

Behind him, the
patrol car appeared, siren screaming, lights flashing. Croaker
glanced in the rearview mirror. For this to work, he needed the
patrol car so close there was room only for reflex response. He
returned his attention ahead. The light was still red. He prayed for
it to hold. If it turned to green now…

Here came the patrol
car. To his left, a large truck lumbered along the cross street. The
young officer in the patrol car was using his loudspeaker ordering
Croaker to pull over. Croaker floored the accelerator, swinging left,
crossing the path of the oncoming truck. The startled trucker blew
his air horn and Croaker just missed crushing his rear bumper on the
truck's grille.

The patrol car,
speeding after him, was not so fortunate. It rammed the truck almost
head-on. The entire front end accordioned in on the young cop. His
head came flying forward but before it could slam into the steering
wheel, the air bag deployed.

That was as much as
Croaker glimpsed as he sped away. His right hand shook a little. When
he pulled up in front of the West Wing pavilion, he noticed a crack
in the steering wheel where he'd been gripping it with his
biomechanical hand.

Like a fine Florida
restaurant or nightclub, Jackson Memorial Hospital had valet parking.
Considering the area of Miami it was in, it was a smart move. Croaker
looked at his watch. It was now forty-five minutes since he'd called
Jenny and told her "Go!" Stansky would be arriving any
minute, if he wasn't here already.

He glanced up at the
pavilion's brick facade, then trotted up the steps into the cool,
hushed lobby. He took the elevator up to the fifteenth floor, went
quickly along a wide hallway. He passed a nurses' station, then
turned a corner. The Dialysis unit was across the street at Jackson
Memorial Towers, but Jenny had decided to bring Rachel directly to
West Wing 15, where the transplant operating theaters were housed.

He saw Jenny at the
far end of the corridor. She had just come out of Rachel's room. As
if sensing his approach, she turned. Seeing him, she smiled, then
quickly shook her head. Stansky hadn't shown up yet.

"How is she?"
he asked. They were still some ways apart, but the corridor was clear
and the nurses' station more than a hundred feet behind him around
the corner. Between them were only two patient rooms and a bathroom.
Jenny had wisely picked a quiet little backwater section of the floor
to keep Rachel safe.

"Better,"
Jenny said.

"It was Stansky,
wasn't it?"

She nodded, only
briefly distracted by a tall, slim technician in a white coat pushing
a man in a wheelchair out of a room between them. "Your instinct
was right. No wonder we were making no headway with the infection.
Stansky was reintroducing the sepsis into Rachel's intravenous tube
every day."

"He was
poisoning her," Croaker said. "Why?"

The technician turned
the wheelchair in Croaker's direction. "Why don't you ask him
yourself?" the technician said as he kicked off the wheelchair's
brakes and hurled it directly at Croaker.

Even though the
"patient" was partially slumped over, Croaker recognized
him. It was Stansky. The doctor's wrists and ankles were bound
cruelly to the wheelchair with wire and his suit looked dark with
sweat and blood. Croaker snared one arm of the wheelchair with his
biomechanical hand. It swung around on two wheels, almost pitching
over on its side before he had it under control. By that time, he'd
already determined that Dr. Ronald Stansky was quite dead.

Croaker looked past
Stansky to see the man in the white coat. He was standing just behind
Jenny. One arm was locked across her throat.

"You see how
ridiculously easy this is, señor? Finding the
vulnerable spot is my forte. That is because it is a distinct
pleasure."

Croaker looked into
Jenny's green eyes. There was concern there, to be sure. But no
panic. He returned his attention to the man in the technician's coat.
It was Antonio, not Heitor; his nose wasn't broken.

"You once told
me that others lied to me," Croaker said. "Stansky was one
of the worst offenders, wasn't he?"

"Oh, there are
worse, I assure you."

Croaker held out his
hands, palms up. "Antonio, this is between you and me," he
said. "There's no need to involve anyone else."

"No man is an
island, señor. Surely you know that." Those
amber eyes scrutinized Croaker as he walked slowly down the corridor.
"It is by his private and business connections with the world
that a man may be influenced."

"Manipulated,
you mean."

Antonio smiled. "My
English is not so fine as yours, señor. Perdoname."

"Cut the crap,
Antonio. What do you want?" "Madre de mentiras.
You have the patience of a moth."

"Unfortunately
for you, no." Antonio's eyes blazed briefly. "That's far
enough, señor." For emphasis, he tightened his
grip on Jenny's throat, making her gag. "Hospital
security—laughable though it is—has been neutralized.
We're here now, señor, the three of us. And, of
course, your niece. Until I say otherwise."

"Stansky had
become more trouble than he was worth. Perhaps you know something of
his sexual peccadilloes."

"So much for
your English being 'not so fine.' " Every few seconds, his gaze
flicked to Jenny's face, monitoring her like a doctor checks on a
patient in critical condition. He didn't know how she would handle
herself in a crisis.

Antonio smiled.
"Peccadillo"—he rolled the Us,
Spanish style—"comes from the Spanish. Pecado. It
means 'little sin.'" He sighed as if he were truly saddened.
"Stansky's sins weren't so little anymore. Pity. He had his
uses."

"Like pimping
for you and Heitor." In interrogations, it was wise to tell your
subject several dark and dirty things about himself. This put the two
of you on a different plane. An intimacy evolved, and that's what you
wanted. Also, it put the subject off guard, softened him up for the
questions you inevitably wanted answered. "Stansky culled the
live bodies for you to plunder from among the patients in his Margate
clinic. What I want to know is what's your connection with Trey
Merli?"

"Hmm."
Antonio's eyes were hooded. "What's a trey merli?"

"Here's what's
been bothering me, Antonio." Croaker went on as if Antonio
hadn't spoken. "I break into Gold Coast Exotic Auto Rentals and
what do I find?"

Croaker's hands
curled into fists. He saw in Antonio's face how the other man
delighted in baiting him. With effort, he refocused on what he needed
to do. "You're already inside. Yet you didn't trip the alarm.
When I follow you out, it's through a broken rear window. Only the
glass shards are all on the outside."

Antonio shrugged.
"So?"

"You broke the
window getting out. Which means there was only one way for you to
have gotten in. You had a key and the alarm code."
Croaker cocked his head. "Now who could have given you those
things except the owner? A man named Trey Merli. But maybe you know
him as Marcellus Rojas Diego Majeur."

"Curious, isn't
it?" There was a smile on Antonio's face not unlike the one on
the Mona Lisa.

At that moment, the
door to the bathroom opened and Matty stepped out into the corridor.
Several things happened at once. Matty gave a little "oh!"
at what she saw; Antonio moved his head sightly to see what was
happening; Jenny smashed the heel of her shoe against Antonio's
instep, and Croaker went into action. He had seen in Jenny's eyes
what she had meant to do a split second before she did it and he was
prepared.

He raced past Matty,
spinning her out of harm's way. He had just an instant while Antonio
was reacting to the sharp and unexpected pain in his foot. He locked
his biomechanical fingers around Antonio's wrist, pulled the muscular
arm away from Jenny's throat. She ducked down, gasping in air.

Croaker extruded the
stainless-steel nail of his forefinger. It slid across Antonio's
throat.

"Don't make
another move, señor."

It was an odd order
for Antonio to give. He was the man with the weapon at his throat.
Then Croaker saw that Jenny's face was white and pinched. He looked
down to see the stiletto blade of a gravity knife pressed against her
side. Antonio was gripping it with his free hand.

"What do they
call this, señor? A Mexican standoff, no?"

Antonio seemed
inordinately pleased with himself. As if he'd planned this all along.
Croaker was furious. To have one of the Bonita twins so near to the
three women he cared most about in life was intolerable. With his
face very close to Antonio's, he said, "What is it you want?"

"Es verdad,
señor. I would die first." Antonio flicked his wrist
and the blade of the gravity knife disappeared into its handle.
Pocketing the knife, he vanished around the corner of the corridor.

"Jenny—"
Croaker began.

"I'm all right"
She had already regained her balance and was rubbing the sore spot in
her back. "Who in God's name was that?"

"Antonio
Bonita." Together, they walked toward where Matty was standing
near Rachel's room. "He's part of my problem."

Croaker turned to his
sister and she nodded. She, too, was okay, just shaken. Then she saw
Stansky, slumped over, tied to the wheelchair.

"Oh, my God!"

Croaker took her in
his arms, guided her back down the hall and into Rachel's room.
"Honey, stay with Rachie, now. Dr. Marsh says the infection's
finally under control."

"I know, she
told me," Matty said. "I've been praying." She looked
at Croaker. "But, Lew, I called Dr. Stansky. You told me to,
right? I told him we were here. And now—" She turned, as
if she could look through the door to where Stansky's corpse still
sat, cooling by the moment.

"Don't think
about that," he soothed. "Stansky was corrupt. He was
hurting Rachie." He sat her in a chair by the bedside. "You
just concentrate on Rachel. Pray, if you want to. By tomorrow, I
promise she'll have her kidney."

He squeezed her hand
and left her there. Outside, in the corridor, Jenny was coming out of
an unoccupied room. "I put Stansky out of public view for the
time being. It's enough he scared the daylights out of your sister."

She went to a wall
phone and lifted the receiver.

In two strides,
Croaker was at her side. "What are you doing?"

"Calling the
cops, what else?" she whispered with her hand cupped over the
mouthpiece. "After what's just happened it's obvious hospital
security won't cut it."

Croaker reached
across her, depressed the pips, severing the connection. "Listen
to me, Jenny. There've been some unexpected complications. The people
who're involved with the organ harvesting are putting me under the
gun. They've got the cops looking for me on a trumped-up charge of
murder."

"Oh, Christ."
Now she did look scared. "But Lew. I have no choice. There's a
dead man in that room. I have a duty to call the cops."

"Of course you
do. I won't stop you." He took the receiver out of her hand and
hung it up. "Listen to me. I'm in such deep water I can't see
the surface." He pointed. "Antonio killed Stansky to stop
him from talking about the organ harvesting operation. But why bring
the body here? Why rattle my cage further by threatening you?"

"You heard him.
It was a macho thing." Jenny seemed to be conjuring up Antonio's
image in her head. "Christ, I've met so many guys like that."

Croaker nodded. "In
a way, it was a show of power. Believe me, I was impressed.
But don't for a minute think you've met anyone like Antonio Bonita."
He studied her face, trying to judge her level of anxiety. "See,
he wasn't lying. He wants to test my mettle."

Jenny closed her eyes
for a moment. When she opened them, he could see that they were
clouded with worry but free of tears.

"Don't you see,"
he pressed on, "the moment you call the police I have to be out
of here. Within minutes of you telling them what's happened, they'll
be buzzing around here like bees on flowers. They won't let you
alone. That means I can't get to you until it's all over."

"Oh, Lew."
She put her head against his chest for a moment. "Now I know
what it's like when I give a patient's family bad news. I feel like
something irrevocable has happened." She looked at him. "Isn't
there some way out? There must be. I can't believe it will all end in
tears."

"It won't."
He gripped her shoulders. "These people have given me a role to
play. For the moment, at least, I've got to stick to it. I can't—I
won't—take a chance with Rachel's life."

"But isn't that
just what they're counting on?"

Of course she was
right. What did it matter that he had caught a glimpse of the daring
conspiracy among ACTF director Spaulding Gunn, Bennie, and Barbacena
to use the Mexican Chiapas rebels as pawns to destabilize Mexico and
install a new government that would make a handful of Americans rich
beyond anyone's wildest dreams? They still had him firmly in their
vise. As long as Rachel's life hung in the balance, he'd have to do
what was required of him.

"Damnit, Lew,
I'm not the kind of person to sit on my hands and wait around for
something to happen. All right. Maybe you can't do anything except be
a rat in their maze. But not me." Her eyes were alight. "Look,
they got to her. Some way, somehow they caused her to need this
kidney. If I could find out how they did it—"

"It was Stansky.
I know it." Croaker shook his head. "But, Jenny, even if
you find out how they got to Rachel, what good would it do? She still
needs that kidney and I have to pay their price for it."

"Jesus."
She slammed the flat of her hand against the wall. "There's got
to be something."

"If you find it,
let me know."

"Don't."
She'd heard the defeat in his tone and she glared at him. "Don't
you dare give up hope."

His lips brushed
hers. "You're a remarkable person, Jenny. I'm sorry as hell I
got you into this."

She put a hand behind
his neck and kissed him fiercely. She opened his lips with hers and
her tongue twined with his. He put his arms around her. He did not
want to let her go. The force of her will lent him strength. It was
so heady that for an instant he was dizzied. Grudgingly, he finally
released her. She didn't cling and she wasn't going to cry.

"Take care of
Rachel." He handed her the phone. "In the next twelve hours
she's going to need the kind of care only you can give her."

He left as Antonio
had, swiftly and silently, disappearing around the corner.

Jenny watched that
corner of the corridor as if by will alone she could bring him back.
She counted silently to sixty. Then she turned and dialed 911.

5

Given a choice,
Croaker would not have used the T-bird. He didn't have that luxury;
he couldn't afford to have it found at the hospital. So he took the
chance, and drove it. The drive to Miami International airport was
nerve-racking. Every time he spotted a Metro-Dade patrol car, he made
a detour. That put him in neighborhoods best avoided. There was a
positive side to that. The cops tended to avoid them as well.

At the airport, he
put the T-bird in the long-term parking lot. As he walked to the
domestic airline terminals, he made a call on his cell phone.

"Yeah?" a
male voice said in his ear.

"Hey, Felix."

"Lew, what the
hell."

Felix Pinkwater
worked for the Florida Department of Revenue. They'd worked together
on several ACTF cases.

"I need a
favor," Croaker said. Among other matters, the FDR was in charge
of collecting the state corporate taxes.

"How about first
thing tomorrow morning. I'm late for my tennis game."

"Felix, I have
no leeway. I need this now."

Felix sighed. "What
is it, Lew?"

"A club on
Lincoln in SoBe called the Boneyard. I need a rundown on the owners."

"Jesus, Lew.
What else can I get you?"

"A starring role
beside Jodie Foster would be nice. But right now I'll settle for
this."

Felix snorted in his
ear. "Hold on. Let me get the old computer fired up. This time
of the day it's one tired puppy."

Croaker stood outside
the terminal. People rushed to make their flights. Others, just
deplaning, sauntered out.

"Got it,"
Felix said in his ear. "The Boneyard is owned by a corporation:
Los Mirlos Encantados, Inc."

"Los Mirlos
Encantados is a subsidiary," Felix was saying. "The parent
company is Mineral Imports, S.A."

"And Mineral
Imports is owned by?"

"Some Bahamian
corporation called Juego Holdings. And don't ask me who owns Juego
Holdings. With these offshore shell companies it's impossible to know
for sure." Felix sounded aggrieved. Like all bureaucrats, his
power resided in his facts and figures.

Croaker's pulse had
accelerated. Juego meant game in Spanish. And the Game was
all-important to the Bonitas.

Croaker laughed.
"Toddle on off to your tennis game, Felix. I owe you."

"Big time,"
Felix said. "Hasta luego, muchacho."

In the terminal
Croaker did a slow cruise of the airline ticket counters. As he
passed the Delta desk, he overheard the attendant saying, "I'm
sorry, but the six-ten to Los Angeles is completely sold out. There
are no standby seats available and that's our last flight tonight."

She was speaking to a
college kid in a denim jacket, jeans, and Reeboks. He had a duffel
bag over one broad shoulder.

"Hey, you know
there's one seat left on the American flight. It leaves in just about
an hour and a half."

The kid
shook his head. "Doesn't matter. I don't have the bucks."

"C'mon,"
Croaker said. "Let's see what we can do."

The kid looked
skeptical. "This a joke or what?"

"You want to get
home tonight," Croaker said, "right?"

At the American
counter, he paid cash for the ticket. He used the fictitious name
he'd given the Delta attendant. When he handed over the money, he
used his biomechanical hand, displaying it prominently so the
American attendant would remember him. Then he went back to the kid
and handed him the ticket.

The kid eyed it
suspiciously. "Okay. What's the catch?"

Croaker showed him
his federal I.D. "Official business. You get the ticket. You
travel under the name on the ticket. Then you forget all about it."

"That's it?"

Croaker nodded. "You
need my help and I need yours. It's as simple as that."

The kid grinned and
pumped Croaker's hand. "Hey, cool. Thanks a lot."

"Give my
congratulations to your sister."

Outside, as he waited
for a shuttle bus, Croaker felt satisfied. He'd given the cops a
trail to follow. The more time they wasted on trying to track him
down in L.A., the more leeway he had here in Miami.

He looked around.
Everything seemed different: sharp, acutely focused, saturated with
color. He was aware of everything. It was always like this at the end
of a case, when, at long last, the perp was in sight. Now every
decision made, every action undertaken was crucial. Latinos had the
best phrase for it: Bailar en la cuerda floja. That was what
he was doing now: dancing on the slack rope. Balancing on the razor's
edge.

He took the shuttle
to the Fontainbleu Hotel, then grabbed a cab up to Palm Beach. It was
an expensive ride but worth every penny. It was near 8 P.M. when he
walked across the concrete parking lot. He took the tag off a Buick
Riviera, switched it with the one on the turquoise Mustang. Then he
climbed behind the Mustang's wheel. The facade of the Royal Poinciana
Hospital loomed cool as an ice cube in the gathering darkness. He got
in and turned on the ignition. The engine thrummed happily. He put it
in gear and pulled out of the lot. If he kept to the speed limits he
had just enough time to make one stop before his eight-thirty
appointment with Majeur.

The lobby of the
Raleigh Hotel was tall and stately, as evocative of the 1930s as the
salon of an old ocean liner. Some years ago, it had been lovingly
restored. The terrazzo floor was beautifully patterned and polished.
Beyond, up a short flight of stairs, was the open restaurant, which
looked out on a garden filled with palm trees and a spectacular pool
that had made the cover of Life when the hotel first opened.

The bar was justly
famous. Tucked away in the left corner of the lobby, its dark
terrazzo floor had embedded in it a stylized outline of a martini
glass, complete with olive garnish. The place was small and intimate,
with a burnished wood bar and a mirror-clad wall of glass shelves
filled with liquor bottles of every description. It was an authentic
haunt, meant for adults, celebrations, and laughter that burst like
the bubbles in fine champagne.

Majeur was already at
the bar. A martini glass was in front of him. By his left knee was
the kind of hard-sided aluminum case photographers use to carry their
delicate equipment.

"A martini for
my friend," Majeur told the bartender as Croaker took the stool
next to him. "And make it just like this one. Dry as the
Kalahari."

He was dressed in the
sort of deliberately casual suit that cost $1,600. If it was
wrinkled—and it was—it was meant to be. He wore a
band-collar shirt of subtly striped silk and Bruno Magli loafers. His
eyes were slightly glassy, as if he'd been drinking for a very long
time. Maybe he'd been celebrating but he didn't look like he'd be
laughing any time soon.

"You picked a
fine spot," he said as the bartender set the martini in front of
Croaker. "The drinks are first rate."

"That's beside
the point," Croaker said. Majeur took up his glass. "Not to
me."

"It's getting
late." Croaker slipped off his stool. "Let's get this over
with."

Croaker sat back
down. With the cops beating the bushes for him, he was uneasy in
public places. But maybe this would turn out for the best. Something
was eating at Majeur.

Majeur swallowed half
his martini. "Do you know anything about the Kalahari, señor?"

Because he knew it
would calm Majeur, Croaker took a sip of his martini. "Just that
it's a desert in Africa."

"It covers a
hundred thousand square miles in southern Botswana, eastern Nambia,
and western South Africa, to be exact. I once flew over it. Do you
know that it's pockmarked with lake beds? Cracked and parched now.
Dry as a bone. But once there was water. jY la vidal"
And life!

Croaker had once
interrogated a serial bomber who was so antsy the other cops on the
squad were sure he was a stone junkie. Croaker knew better. The man
simply had to tell them just how smart he'd been. It was an
imperative inside himself over which he had lost control. There comes
a time in every perp's life when he needs to unburden himself. It
might come in the form of bragging or confession or anywhere in
between. Like the sun coining up each day, it always showed itself.
You just had to be clever enough to recognize it.

Majeur flicked a hand
for another martini. Nothing changed in his face. "I
don't want anything to happen to Rachel."

And in that one
simple sentence Croaker understood everything. "The question I
kept asking myself is why a man like you should be renting a car? You
have a lot of money; you probably own more than one car. So why the
Lincoln? Now I see. You knew I'd do a run on the tag, that I'd find
out you'd rented it from Gold Coast. And you wanted me to go there."

Majeur's martini came
and he sampled it. For all his outward reaction, they might have been
comparing golf scores.

"At Gold Coast,
I meet Vonda," Croaker continued, "who tells me a man named
Trey Merli owns it. Also, she's prepared for me. She even knows what
a real warrant looks like. Because, she tells me, Trey Merli has
shown one to her. The second time I'm there, Antonio Bonita is inside
the office, armed with the keys and the alarm code. From Rachel's
diary I discover that Trey Merli knows Dr. Ronald Stansky, her
physician. She'd scribbled down an address on Hibiscus. When I go
there, everything is placed just so. Including a load of shirts from
the Jiffy Tyme Dry Cleaners. But instead of cardboard between the
folded shirts, I find certain medical files. This place isn't a home,
it's a stage set, I assume for my benefit." Croaker took another
sip of his martini. "Then there's the matter of the grave."

Majeur's dark gaze
met Croaker's in the mirror at the back of the bar. "Which
grave, sir?"

"Theresa
Marquesa Barbacena's. Barbacena himself is almost never in the
States. What on earth would his wife's grave be doing in South
Florida?"

Majeur nodded his
head. "So it's true what they say, that you're one fine
detective. Of course that was not her grave, just a stage set. Yes, I
set clues for you: the false grave, the rental car—this was a
trail back to Trey Merli. And at Trey Merli's house I was able to
leave for you the files on Sonia, Vonda, and your niece."

"But why? You
work for the Bonitas."

Majeur stared into
the clear depths of his martini. Then, he quickly downed it and threw
some money on the table. "It's getting close in here."

They went out into
the lobby, up the stairs, through a glass door out into air sticky
with humidity. The velvet evening hung in the palm fronds like
spiderwebs. Lights twinkled around the perimeter of the pool. A
couple of kids, waist deep in water, splashed each other while a
youngish woman in a bandeau bathing suit looked on indulgently.
Otherwise, the pool area was deserted.

The two men walked
slowly until they heard the rhythmic sounds of the surf.

Majeur carried the
aluminum case as if he were a replacement window salesman. Near the
seawall he put the case down between them. "Now I will tell you
something, señor. As they say, Yo hablo con el
corazon en la mano." I speak from the heart. "You grow
up, you gain a profession, you make career choices. For good or ill,
they're yours. You meet a woman, fall in love, get married. In other
words, there is a routine, a rhythm. This is life."

He took out a cigar.
"But then, señor, something happens." He
slipped it out of its case, clipped off the end, and lighted it.
"This something is as unexplainable as it is unexpected. You see
someone and a door opens to a place inside you that was there all
along. Only you didn't know it. Señor, this person,
without even knowing it, leads you to a new place. Your old life
fades like a photograph in the fire. And another life, as it seems,
magically and mysteriously begins."

Croaker thought of
Majeur slipping off his wedding ring and throwing it into the South
Beach surf.

"Señor,
this is what happened when I saw Rachel. I saw her with that pig,
Stansky, and my heart stopped." He turned to look at Croaker
directly. "Escuchame, señor. This was not a
matter of lust. Lust is a thing of the surface, of the moment. Like
smoke, it disappears on the first gust of wind. No, I am speaking of
something permanent, profound. This was a matter of finding myself.
When I saw her, when I saw what she was doing, what Stansky was doing
to her, I saw how lost and alone a human being could be. And in that
moment, I recognized myself. In her. I saw how alone I was in my
marriage. I woke up in bed the next morning and looked at the person
next to me. I saw a woman from a prominent family, a woman of
significant pedigree, a women for whom I had no feeling whatsoever. I
had married her simply to please my father. And I thought of Rachel.
She became a mirror in which I saw my own soul. I knew, then, that I
had to do something to save her. In a sense, it was the first step in
saving myself. Comprende?"

Of course Croaker
understood. He had felt something remarkably similar as he'd been
reading Rachel's diary—the urgent necessity to save her. From
men like the late Donald Duke and Stansky and all the others who
marched in their footsteps.

"So you decided
to play both sides of the fence. You'd betray the Bonitas while
continuing to carrying out their orders."

Majeur nodded. "The
morning after I saw Rachel and Stansky together I knew I had to do
something to try and thwart the Bonitas. But what? They are very
clever men; I could not give myself away." Majeur stared at the
children climbing out of the pool. "They used Rachel to get to
you. They need Barbacena dead. At the same time, they have to
maintain reasonable deniability. They chose you—someone with
skill and training; someone who could not be traced back to them
should he be caught."

"Majeur, how did
they get to Rachel?"

"I do not know,
señor. Truly." He shrugged. "You cannot
change what has already happened. She still needs the kidney."

Croaker believed him;
Majeur looked miserable.

"I did some
digging recently," Croaker said. "Does the name Juego
Holdings sound familiar to you?"

"But of course.
I have done some paperwork for that entity. It is one of Antonio and
Heitor's shell corporations."

So it was as Croaker
had suspected. The Bonitas owned the Bone-yard, the club on Lincoln
Road where Rachel had collapsed in an apparent drug overdose. Another
link between Antonio, Heitor, and Rachel. But what did it really
prove? Why had she collapsed at just that moment? What had they done
to her?

"Now that I know
you've betrayed the Bonitas," Croaker said, turning his thoughts
back to the present, "I want to know how you became involved in
the first place."

Majeur's shoulders
slumped. His dapper clothes seemed to fall in listless folds, as if
in the last few minutes he'd shriveled physically. "It certainly
wasn't my idea." He placed the cigar very precisely on the sea
wall, letting it smoulder like a dormant volcano. "A year ago,
maybe a little more, I was contacted by Antionio Bonita. He was
already working for your government. He showed me reams of records.
They were offical—government documentation. The federates
knew everything—who I represented, the deals I'd brokered, the
drugs that had passed from hand to hand. They had me by the throat."

"So they
co-opted you."

Majeur nodded. "I
kept on with my practice. This is what they wanted. Antonio told me
that from time to time I would be contacted. My role would be given
to me in detail. All that was required of me was to follow the
script."

"Which is what
you did in this case. Until you saw Rachel with Stansky."

"Correct,
señor." Majeur watched cigar smoke taken by the
wind. "This morning, I told you that life was a gamble. By
betraying the Bonitas—by allowing you to see it was they who
damaged your niece to coerce you into murdering Juan Garcia
Barbacena—I am gambling that you will be the one to stop these
monsters."

But it wasn't merely
justice Majeur wanted. Croaker had seen that look in many a man's eye
and he knew what it meant. "Listen to me, Majeur, I won't kill
the Bonitas for you or for anyone else."

"I know it. But
there may come a time soon when you are given no other choice."
Majuer picked up his cigar. "I have no illusions, sir. We have
entered into a most deadly game. My actions have already left me in
mortal peril. The Bonitas knew you would show up at Gold Coast and
they took precautions. Ouizas ellos se le pon-ermos la mosca
detras de la oreja." I think they already suspect me. "With
the twins, who can say?"

He was standing
straighter now. A modicum of the old Majeur was reasserting itself.
"If they do, it does not matter. Not now. Tonight, I have
declared myself. I reject them and it is a feeling muy bueno."

Croaker listened to
the surf, hi its constancy, it reminded him of the rise of life over
death. More than anything now, he needed that reassurance. It seemed
clear now that Bennie could not be involved with the ACTF. The
Bonitas must have set him up. But there was still a nagging doubt and
Croaker knew he needed factual confirmation of what he'd learned. He
needed to get his hands on Majeur's phone bills to see if they jibed
with the Southern Bell computer records that showed Bennie was paying
for Majeur's cell phone line.

"Listen to me,"
Majeur said. "The Bonitas run this organ harvesting ring, but in
this they are not independent. Your government is involved. In what
manner, I do not know. But it is clear that they have made some kind
of lunatic deal with the Bonitas." He took the cigar out of his
mouth. "One does not make deals with a pair of rabid dogs."

"But you've
never met the Fed who made the deal with the Bonitas—the man
who calls the shots."

"No. Just
Antonio." Majeur picked up his cigar. "And now I must be
going. But I will meet you at midnight."

"How do you know
where I'll be?"

Majeur smiled. "I
know where the target will be. We both read the same material; it's a
sure bet we came to the same conclusion. You are not going to
penetrate those two fortresses. With his entourage, I will gamble you
are not going to make the attempt anywhere indoors."

"How d'you
know?"

"The odds, sir.
At heart I am a gambler. You know." He waited a moment, trying
to read Croaker's expression. "You have been to the restaurant
already, haven't you?"

Croaker nodded.
"Don't take this the wrong way, Majeur, but I don't want your
help. It's too dangerous for both of us. As you say, the Bonitas have
an uncanny ability of finding out everything."

Majeur gave him a
fierce grin. He reached down, moved the aluminum case next to
Croaker. "This is something I must do. For myself, señor.
Call it the rehabilitation of a soul."

Croaker took
possession of the tools of the assassin's trade. "There's a
building." He gave Majeur an address on Washington Avenue. "It's
directly across from An Chay. Three stories high. Access to the
rooftop is gained in the rear. From there, I'll have a clear vantage
point to the front of the restaurant. The angle is ideal."

"You have made a
wise choice. With all of the target's vaunted security, it is prudent
for you to have a lookout. And in the moments just before and after
impact, someone to watch your back. Besides, the quicker the kill is
confirmed, the quicker Rachel gets her kidney."

"Thanks,
Majeur."

"De nada.
There is a way you can show my gratitude to Rachel when she recovers
her health. Tell her a little about me."

"You'll do that
yourself," Croaker said. "You'll see her at Jackson
Memorial when this is all over."

"You're thinking
of Heitor and Antonio," Croaker prompted. "After I hit the
target, they have no more use for me. Heitor is obsessed with this—"
He raised his biomechanical hand. "And as for Antonio—I
don't yet quite know what he's obsessed with. But he's drawn to me."

"No matter, sir.
They will kill you." There seemed no doubt in Majeur's mind.
"They have no other choice. You know too much; you are too
dangerous to them."

"I know."
Croaker discovered they were alone in the lighted pool area. "Just
one more thing."

"I have told you
everything."

"Not quite
everything. What's your involvement with Estrella Leyes?" It was
not so much a stab in the dark as a foray into the shadows. The
medical files at Trey Merli's house had been slipped between shirts
just back from Jiffy Tyme Dry Cleaners, where Estrella worked.

"So. You have
traveled farther than I had anticipated." Majeur said. "Estrella
and I grew up together. In those days, she was like my older sister.
But where my interests lie in the business world, hers lie in the
larger universe that surrounds us all."

"You mean Heta
I."

Majeur nodded. "After
I stole the files from Stansky I needed a place to stash them.
Estrella volunteered."

"I've met her,"
Croaker said. "It's clear the Bonitas frighten her."

"Terrify is more
the word." Croaker could see the concern for Estrella on
Majeur's face. "She has seen firsthand the kind of terrible
rituals they perform on humans. It is said—she has told me
this—that the twins are not born of human womb. As the story
goes, they were left on a dying woman's doorstep. Even then, as
infants, they were capable of terrible things. They ate her child. So
she tried to kill them, the woman. But they would not die. Instead,
they clung to her, crying in their hunger and their desperate need.
By their constant suckling, they healed her. In a kind of hideous
symbiosis they strengthened one another. Soon, she forgot about her
own child. They made her forget. She took them in. She became their
mother."

Croaker almost
laughed. "Jesus, you don't believe that crap, do you? I mean,
there are stories of bogeymen, vampires, all sorts of demons the
world over. But that's all they are. Stories."

Majeur shrugged. "On
this subject I am neutral, señor. The law is what I
know." He gave a little smile that seemed somehow sad. "The
law and how to circumvent it."

"What power the
Bonitas have they learned from Humaità Milagros. Then they
perverted that knowledge to their own ends."

"That is one
history. But listen to me carefully. In Guarani, history and
legend are expressed by the same word." Majeur looked
down at the aluminum case, perhaps thinking of its contents. "One
thing I do know: Estrella Leyes is not an ignorant woman."

"Trey Merli"'s
house on Hibiscus Island was just as Croaker had left it after his
encounter with Heitor. Wherever Majeur had needed to go, it wasn't
back here. Croaker slipped in through the screened porch. He went
swiftly and silently through the darkened house. The perfectly set
table looked eerie—a tableau awaiting stage directions to come
alive.

There was a den, but
after twenty minutes of searching, he was convinced it contained no
household records. He went into the master bedroom. The shirts were
still on the bed, the TV and video equipment still risen from their
lacquer coffin at the foot of the bed.

Something was
bothering him about the whole situation with the Bonitas, the ACTF,
and Bennie, but he couldn't put his finger on just what. He didn't
believe Majeur had lied to him. On the other hand, he was convinced
Majeur didn't know the whole truth.

He turned on a lamp
and his eye wandered over the details of the room. More often
than not, it isn't what's hidden you're looking for, his father
had once told him. It's what's right in front of your nose.

Croaker stared at the
stack of laser discs: Casablanca, Blade Runner, Last Tango in
Paris. Beneath, something metallic gleamed. He reached over,
pushed the laser discs aside. His finger hooked around a latch and
lifted. Out rolled a deep drawer. Inside, were hanging file folders.
Tax returns, bills, receipts, investment records. He looked through
those but found nothing unusual, except that Majeur was a good deal
wealthier than he had imagined. His gaze fell on a tab on which was
written: phone receipts. Just what he was looking for.

Croaker took out the
folder and leafed through it. The house had three phone lines.
Nothing surprising in that, given its owner's profession. Then, he
saw the current bill for the private cell number Majeur had given
him. It was sent to Majeur and contained a notation that it had been
paid by check. The notation gave the check number and the date it had
been paid. Croaker looked at the month's previous bill and the one
before that. They were the same—billed to and paid for by
Marcellus Rojas Diego Majeur.

There was a ghost in
the machine. On one point, at least, Antonio had got it right:
everyone was lying to Croaker. Even computers. But then computers
were dispassionate. They merely displayed data programmed by humans.
And data could be altered.

Croaker felt almost
light-headed. According to the records he'd found, Bennie wasn't
paying Majeur's cell phone bill as the Bell South records showed.
That meant Bennie hadn't lied to him about knowing Majeur. Everything
Croaker had learned about Bennie from the computer floppy disk was
now suspect. But if his involvement in the ACTF was a lie—if
all the documentation about "Sero" had been planted by
Antonio and Heitor—what was Bennie planning to do at midnight
tonight at precisely the same moment that Juan Garcia Barbacena was
arriving in Miami? Why did he need the Captain Sumo?

It was almost 10 p.m.
when Croaker pulled up to Estrella Leyes's house in El Portal.
Through the front windows he could see the blue flicker of the TV
set: Pablo Leyes watching ESPN.

Next door, Sonia's
house was dark and still. For a time, Croaker stood beside the
night-blooming jasmine. The sensuous perfume wafted in waves from the
white, starlike blossoms. In the gathered shadows, he seemed part of
the street, as essential to this block as the big old lemon tree that
shaded the east side of Sonia's house. He listened to the palm fronds
clatter in the night wind and imagined it was the sound of Sonia's
voice. He wanted to hear her laughter, to see the bright glint of her
eyes in candlelight. He wanted to punish the men who had denied her a
chance at life. That they were the same men who had injured Rachel
seemed cruel beyond any compromise. He knew there would come a time
when he would meet Antonio and Heitor for the final time. He could
feel it like an ache deep in his bones. There would be no half
measures, no question of surrender. There could only be vengeance and
death.

Goaded into motion by
such turbulent emotion, he strode through the glow of a streetlight.
Coming home should never involve so much pain and suffering, he
thought.

The Leyes's front
door was wide open so that what little breeze blew across the block
could cool the house through the screen door. The noise from inside
drowned out even the most industrious insects' drone. According to
the hyperbolic announcer, the vaunted Argentine soccer team was on
the march. A blade of glimmering blue light, brilliant as a spark
from an arc welder's torch, spilled across the porch like a beckoning
finger.

A large moth was
stuck on the screen door as if with a dab of mortar. Illuminated by
an irregular patch of moonlight, its pale, speckled wings seemed made
of the same powder women applied to their cheeks. The moth hung
absolutely motionless, as if suspended between moonlight and the
void. Croaker, moving, cast his shadow, and the moth, a spectral
shape like two hearts touching, hurtled into the night. Croaker
opened the screen door and stepped inside.

He saw squadrons of
chanting fans as players kicked a soccer ball back and forth across
the TV screen. Someone was sitting in a big upholstered chair glued
to the action. From where Croaker stood, he could just see the top of
a man's head over the chairback. It looked like Pablo Leyes's bald
dome.

There was a strong
smell of herbs and spices, and Croaker was reminded of Estrella's
healing work with Nestor, Sonia's dancer friend. A shadow fell on a
section of countertop past the open arch into the kitchen. It
darkened a photo of a young girl amid tropical foliage. No doubt
Estrella Leyes in the jungle outside Asuncion. This beautiful girl
stared at the observer with an uncanny prescience—as if she had
already anticipated this moment in the future, when she would be
scrutinized by a stranger.

At that moment,
Croaker would have called out, but something was wrong. The open
front door, the loudness of the TV, exaggerated by the quietude of
the street outside. The ghostly shadow in the kitchen. Croaker was
struck by the eerie sense that the flickering images on the screen
were spewing their high-tension energy into a static room. He stared
at the back of the chair.

He recalled the first
rime he had seen Psycho. There was a scene near the end
where Marion Crane goes up to the attic of the Bates house and turns
the rocking chair around, revealing the mummified corpse of Norman
Bates's mother. Up until then, you were sure Mrs. Bates was alive
because Norman periodically talked to her. In that moment, everything
was revealed: her death and Norman's madness.

After finding human
heads in refrigerators and office shelves, it took little imagination
to picture another corpse watching soccer with filmed-over eyes. But
if Pablo Leyes was dead, whose shadow ebbed and flowed in the
kitchen?

Croaker touched the
soul-catcher at the bottom of his pocket. He made his decision to
move, and in that moment, a voice said, "Mr. Croaker. An
unexpected pleasure."

The chair swiveled
around and Pablo Leyes smiled. "Don't be startled, son." He
hooked an enormous spatulate thumb back over his shoulder. "I
saw your reflection in the TV screen." His bald head distorted
the hectic TV images into strange bursts of light, like
constellations on a planetarium's ceiling.

Croaker relaxed,
dropping his hand to his side. "I hope you don't mind the
intrusion but it's important I see you."

Leyes beamed. "Hell,
son, with a request like that you're welcome day or night." He
stroked the meat of his arm. "Seems it's been forever since I
was important enough for someone to come see me after hours." He
gestured. "You want a drink—anything? There's some of
Estrella's killer paella she can heat up. Just take a minute."

"Thank you, but
no. I have very little time."

"Time enough to
sit, though." He waited while Croaker perched on the arm of a
tatty sofa. "Now, what's so pressing, son?"

Leyes's watery eyes
clouded over. "For as long as I could stand it. Which wasn't all
that long. I'm no damn paper pusher, make book on it."

Croaker hunched
forward. "I need some info on how someone could break into the
Southern Bell computer system."

"Hack it, you
mean?" Leyes' face twisted up. "Hell, son, I could do it
from here with my notebook computer." He squinted up at Croaker.
"That what you want to do, make a little mischief at my old alma
mater?" He seemed intrigued by the idea, excited even.

"I'd like to get
in," Croaker said. "Several days ago, I logged on using a
police access code."

"Couldn't hack
it with that, let me tell you."

"No, I know.
That's why I'm here." Croaker had to raise his voice over the
frenzied soundtrack from the TV. Someone had scored a goal. "I
got some info from the Southern Bell system that I now suspect is
false. I'd like you to check it out, if you would."

Leyes grinned. "Hell,
son, nothing would give me greater pleasure." He pulled his
wheelchair into view and Croaker got the wheelchair into position.
"That's right. Now, give me a lift into the saddle." He
lifted himself out of the upholstered chair with his massive arms.
Croaker took hold of him under his armpits and he flopped into the
leather wheelchair seat with the solid thwack of a deepwater
fish landing on a boat deck.

"Make yourself
to home," he called as he propelled himself out of the living
room and down the hall to the rear of the house. "Estrella's in
the kitchen. I'll be back with the hardware in a couple minutes."

In the kitchen, a
large iron skillet was on the stove. It was filled with vegetables
and herbs, slowly sauteing. Next to it, a wooden chopping board was
covered with salad—romaine lettuce, cucumbers, coriander.
Croaker didn't see Estrella.

The back door was
open. She must have taken the garbage out.

He pushed through the
screen door, stood on the small concrete stoop, waiting for his eyes
to adjust to the dark. Thick swaths of black-green tree hibiscus
blotted out the moon and bougainvillea draped like bunting. Crickets
and tree frogs chirruped in the still, soupy air.

"Mrs. Leyes?"

A sound from the rank
of three galvanized steel garbage cans drew him down off the stoop.
His footsteps were silent in the grass and loamy mulch beneath the
trees.

He found her crouched
with her back against the middle garbage can. Her elbows were on her
drawn-up knees, her wrists crossed one over the other. It was a kind
of meditative pose, a serene state, but altogether too fixed.

When he knelt down
beside her he saw that her lips had been sewn shut. Her eyes were
open, staring at the swaths of bougainvillea. By dawn tomorrow they
would be reborn in all their magnificent colors. Estrella Leyes would
never see it.

He placed two fingers
on her carotid artery. No pulse. He took out a pocket knife and
carefully slipped the blade between her lips. This close, he could
see the neat sutures applied through her flesh with a surgeon's
artful precision. No beads of blood oozed around the punctures, which
meant her mouth had been stitched shut after she died.

The moment he cut the
sutures, her lower jaw dropped open. Her mouth was filled with small,
smooth stones, dark and wet with her saliva. A drool of it dripped
onto her chest where a dark stain slowly spread around the black hilt
of a chef's knife. What section of blade Croaker could see was mossy
with coriander.

Croaker wiped away
the sudden sweat on his face with the back of his hand. He launched
himself up. In three strides he was back on the stoop and through the
screen door.

The cooking smells,
once so delicious, now seemed cloying. They followed him down the
hall. He walked in absolute silence as Stone Tree had taught him,
rolling his soles from heel to toe, his weight evenly balanced on the
outside of his feet.

He went into each
doorway he passed. To the right was a tiled bath, pristine white,
smelling of sandalwood. Across from it, on the left, was a small
study with a daybed, a cheap desk, and a sisal rug the color of burnt
toffee. Farther along on the left was the master bedroom, decorated
in rose and off-white. The last door on the right was closed. He put
his ear to the door, heard nothing.

Turning the knob, he
unlatched the door. Then, taking a step back, he kicked it open. He
found himself in a large room. It was obviously a new addition
because it was unfinished. Wallboard, taped at the seams, was still
unpainted, the floor was unsanded wood, spattered with dollops of
chalk white spackle and black pencil notations as to window
measurements. The single piece of furniture was a green metal desk,
piled with computers, modems, software packages, and instruction
manuals. From a hole in the ceiling a single wire dangled, attached
to a brown plastic fixture and a bare bulb. The bulb, however, was
not the source of illumination. A small fire flickered in a rough
stone vessel that sat on the floor. By its light he saw the
crocodile.

It was an
evil-looking reptile, horned and scaled, a prehistoric predator that
considered man fair game. It crouched in the corner of the room. Its
small, amber eyes glowed as it tracked Croaker's movement. Its
thickly armored tail flicked in warning. Its black lips pulled back
from yellow incisors and it hissed low in its throat as its heavily
muscled body tensed.

Croaker saw Pablo
Leyes. He lay on his left side, his wheelchair upended and partially
on top of him. Someone—or something—had taken an enormous
bite out of him. It looked as if his spine had been severed.

Croaker took a step
in his direction, and the croc shot forward. Its great gray jaws
opened, then snapped shut with the report of a rifle shot. Croaker
leapt back. Someone chuckled.

"Cuidado,
señor." Have a care! "He will kill you if you
give him half a chance."

Someone stepped out
of the shadows cloaking the right side of the room. "Besides,
Leyes is dead. Take it from me." A square white bandage covered
the center of his face. "Heitor. Christ, what have you done
here?"

"Last night, I
dreamt I was all alone," Heitor said. "In a starry sky I
floated, tumbling, helpless. I looked at those stars, but they were
so far away their light failed to illuminate me, their gravity failed
to hold me. Then I awoke. And, señor, I knew in my
heart I had dreamt about you." Heitor clucked his tongue
reprovingly.

"But this isn't
your dream. I have the ability to choose." Croaker was in a
semicrouch. "And I say to hell with your laws."

As if it were
following the conversation, the croc's huge head swiveled around.

"Then you'll
die, señor, as surely as Estrella and Pablo died.”
There was something obscene about Heitor referring to his victims by
their Christian names. It suggested an unspeakable intimacy.

Barbacena's name
seemed to send Heitor into a frenzy. "I should be the one to
kill him!" His eyes blazed as he thumped his chest. "It
isn't right. I've known that from the beginning! Madre de
ment-iras, this way is too damned civilized. Time and again, I
told Antonio. A shit like Barbacena doesn't deserve a clean death. He
should be allowed to see oblivion approaching slowly"—he
pointed with two fingers "—here, in my eyes. And it should
be done in accordance with Heta I."

"Don't try that
with me," Croaker said. "Heta I is a healing art.
You and Antonio twisted it, perverted it into something bestial and
evil." He swept his arm in an arc. "Just look around you.
Estrella was the healer and you killed her. There's no healing here;
only sickness and death."

Heitor's extreme
agitation had brought blood to his face. A red stain seeped through
the bandage over his nose. He crouched down next to the croc. "See
what becomes of your plans to civilize us."

Croaker felt his
heart skip a beat. Either Heitor was mad or he was talking to the
crocodile. The croc grinned simply by dint of keeping its jaws shut.
Its amber eyes glowed with singular malevolence as its mailed tail
slammed against the wall. Wallboard shattered and dried spackle rose
in the air in a miniature mushroom cloud.

"Heitor—"

"Don't talk to
me!" Heitor cried. "Tell it to Antonio."

"Antonio isn't
here, Heitor." Patience was required now, Croaker knew. "It's
just us chickens and the ghosts of the people you've murdered."

Heitor put his hand
over the flames that rose from the stone vessel, "Sorcerers are
capable of many things, señor. If you were born in
Asuncion you would know. If your veins flowed with Guarani blood, you
would understand." He lowered his hand. As he did so, the
crocodile's eyes turned to slits. "Transformation is one of the
foundations of Heta I. The sorcerer is consumed by fire and
remains unmarked."

His hand plunged into
the fire. The cuff of his shirt blazed, the smells of burning cotton
and crisped human hair were suddenly strong in the room. Heitor made
a fist as the flames spread up his arm. The spark and crackle of the
burning fabric seemed as loud as a forest fire. His lips curled back
from his teeth and now Croaker heard an eerie sound. It seemed like
chanting.

Heitor stood as the
flames curled across his chest and back like a living serpent. His
shirt, turning black, disappearing in small tufts of smoke, broke
apart at the shoulders, hanging down in sparking tatters.

Then, Heitor opened
his clenched fist, hi it were three dark stones. The crocodile's eyes
opened. The flames glimmered and died, as if doused by wind and rain.

Heitor smiled. He
pointed to the crocodile. "The sorcerer becomes an animal in
order to drink the blood of his enemies and remain strong and virile
so that even the passing years cannot touch him. Señor, these
are truths I tell you." He tore off what remained of his ruined
shirt and threw it on the floor. "Here you see the truth but
your mind won't accept it."

Heitor was not
entirely correct. Croaker was thinking of Humaità Milagros,
who Bennie was sure had been reincarnated as a tiger shark. "Bennie
Milagros isn't paying for Majeur's cell phone; Majeur himself is,"
Croaker said. "But you wanted me to think otherwise. You wanted
to pit me against Bennie, to cut me off from everyone and everything.
Why?"

"For the same
reason I killed Pablo and Estrella," Heitor said. "Man is a
social creature; daily he draws on the resources around him,"
Heitor said. "In crises, he will seek the assistance of those
closest to him." It was astonishing. There wasn't a mark on him.
"It never fails, this part of human nature. Like a vine seeking
the rough bole of a tree." The fire might have seared off his
hair, but it had left his flesh unmarked. "You see, señor,
a man is understood only when he stands alone. Finally, the last
layers of civilization are stripped away. What is revealed is the
essence. This is a commodity most rare, precious, and
beautiful. It is to be savored like a magnificent cigar."

Heitor laughed. As he
did so, the croc's jaws gaped open. For a mad instant, it appeared as
if the laughter were emanating from the reptile. "You do not
understand, señor? The Leyes, they would have helped
you. They did before. Now we are in a new phase of the game. You are
alone."

Even before he had
finished speaking, Croaker was on the move. With his biomechanical
hand, he ripped the wire from the ceiling. At the same time, he
slammed his left foot down on the top of the crocodile's snout. The
teeth clashed together with a ferocious clang. He whipped the wire
around the jaws, lashing them tightly and securely together with a
thief's knot. The beast thrashed beneath Croaker's shoe but could do
no damage.

With an incoherent
roar, Heitor rushed Croaker. Without seeming to move at all, Croaker
slammed the heel of his biomechanical hand into Heitor's broken nose.

Heitor screamed and
fell to the floor as if poleaxed. Blood spurted from the ruptured
wound. Croaker kicked him hard in the soft spot just beneath the
lowest rib and Heitor fetched up against the corner where the
crocodile had first crouched. He was out cold.

Bending down, Croaker
took hold of Heitor by his hair and dragged him back down the hall
and into the kitchen. The smell of burnt food greeted him and he took
the skillet off the burner as he passed the stove. Dropping Heitor in
the center of the floor, Croaker went to the refrigerator and took
out a tray full of ice. He stripped Heitor's trousers to his knees,
then applied the ice to his testicles. Heitor awoke with a start and
a little scream.

Croaker knelt,
putting all his weight on the knee that pressed against Heitor's
sternum. "Hola, Heitor," he said. Then he reached
up, turned up the flame on the burner. He extruded a stainless steel
nail from the end of one biomechanical finger and let it heat up in
the gas flame.

Looking into Heitor's
amber eyes, Croaker said, "I knew a guy once. Called
himself Charcoal Man. Charcoal Man worked the city—Coney
Island, the East Village, Forty-second Street, wherever tourists hung
out and the cops wouldn't bother him. He would eat fire. He'd run a
burning torch up and down his bare arm. Then he'd set himself on
fire. That's the kind of thing, you've got to admit, really gets a
crowd going." Croaker's nail glowed red and he studied it
meditatively. "So I guess by your standards, this guy was a
sorcerer." Croaker smiled without warmth. "Only I knew his
tricks, Heitor. How he coated his mouth and throat, how he rubbed his
arms with a Vaseline-based ointment, how he prepared his whole body
so he wouldn't be roasted alive." The glowing nail made a curved
shadow over Heitor's face. "Sorcerer, trickster. I guess it's
just a matter of semantics."

Croaker moved the
red-hot fingernail so Heitor could feel its heat like the sole plate
of an iron. "Now here is what I want to know, Heitor. I want the
truth about Bennie's sister Rosa. What were the circumstances of her
death?"

Heitor's amber eyes
looked beyond the nail to Croaker's face. There was blood all over
his puffy cheeks and lips and ugly bruises were forming beneath his
eyes. "What do you imagine, maricone? That I will
shudder in fear and vomit up my soul to you merely because you order
it?"

"No, Heitor. I
expect nothing from you." From his pocket Croaker extracted
Humaità's spirit-stone. He saw Heitor's eyes open wide as he
pressed it into the hollow of the slim man's throat.

"Ack!"
Heitor's jaws worked spastically. "Acckkk!"

"Now,"
Croaker said softly. "Tell me what I want to know. Tell me about
Rosa Milagros."

For a moment nothing
happened. Then, it seemed as if the amber color drained from Heitor's
eyes. They appeared as transparent as windows.

"I spit on the
woman," Heitor hissed. "I curse her in whatever hell she
finds herself."

"Why?"
Croaker asked. "What did she ever do to you?"

"Before she
came, Antonio and I were mokoi."

"Mokoi,"
Croaker repeated. "What's that?"

"The bond
between twins. It is special. It is sacred. The bitch Rosa ripped us
apart like a doctor prematurely drags a fetus from the womb."
His face twisted in rage and in his maniacal thrashing he almost
unseated Croaker's knee. "It was a violation! An abomination! I
could not allow it."

Illumination flooded
Croaker. So Antonio had told the truth about his love for Rosa. This
revelation was so astonishing that for the moment Croaker did not
know what to make of it. "You killed Rosa," he whispered.

"She loved him,
she said. She could smell the stink of corruption on him, she said.
She could save him, she said." The spirit-stone was leaching the
memory out of Heitor like blood from a stone. In his agony he was
only peripherally aware of Croaker. "She seduced him, drew him
away from mokoi. The us that had been, the us
that was our foundation, the basis of life itself, she destroyed. I
thought, After I kill her, it will be all right. Mokoi will
return. It will be as it always had been between Antonio and myself."
Droplets of blood flew as he shook his head. "Dead wrong. She
reached out from beyond the grave and the gulf between Antonio and me
only grew deeper. Antonio knew what I had done. In that first moment
when he discovered her body, I believed he was actually going to kill
me. I could see it in his eyes. A twin knows. But he couldn't do it.

"We are of the
same womb, of the same moment, birth and death. Antonio remembered
that in time. But there was punishment to come. Like a woman in a
jealous rage, he withheld mokoi. The soul of one twin cannot
meet the other unless both are willing. From that time, our special
bond was severed."

Croaker pressed the
spirit-stone more firmly into Heitor's flesh. "Now I want to
know about Bennie. What's your connection with him?"

Heitor's eerily
transparent eyes seemed fixed on a point not in space, but in time.
"It has to do with the bones, of course. We want the bones.
Everyone does."

"What bones?"

"That will be
enough!" a new voice commanded.

Croaker turned to see
Antonio coming down the hallway. He filled the open archway to the
kitchen, looked past Croaker to his prone and bloody twin. "There
is quite enough of a mess as it is without adding more." His
amber eyes flicked back to Croaker. "Get off him, señor.
I beg of you." He said this in a soft, almost paternal voice
tinged with what could only be called profound sadness.

Croaker did not move.
Antonio, dressed in an oyster gray linen suit, held the length of
wire Croaker had used to bind the crocodile's snout as a cowboy holds
his coiled lasso. There was no sign of the reptile. However, a
curious red welt ran across the bridge of Antonio's nose, down both
cheeks and beneath his jaw. It was as if he had been bound by the
wire. Croaker dismissed the thought as he palmed the spirit-stone so
Antonio wouldn't see it.

Antonio's expression
hardened and he said, "I do not repeat myself, señor.
Do as I have said or suffer the consequences."

With the spirit-stone
taken away, color was flooding back into Heitor's eyes. The flux of
full consciousness transfigured the pupils.

"I am not
afraid, Antonio," Croaker said. "But you and Heitor should
be. I've come for you." He placed his glowing nail against
Heitor's right cheek.

Antonio jumped at the
same instant his twin did. "Señor, you do not
know—"

There was a searing
hiss, a sickly sweet smell that clung to the back of the throat.
Heitor screamed. He thrashed and moaned but he could not dislodge
Croaker. So much for sorcery.

"The dark stones
know." Croaker sheathed his nail. What remained on Heitor's
cheek was a deep red wound that seeped blood. He looked up at
Antonio. "Now he carries my mark. It will serve to remind you
both—"

There was a sudden
fierce gust of wind that took Croaker's breath away. He must have
blacked out for a moment because he next found himself against the
refrigerator door, three feet from where Heitor lay. His back ached,
as if he had slammed into the fridge. Antonio was now standing
between him and Heitor.

Antonio stood over
Croaker, trembling with barely suppressed rage. "Remember I told
you that you were an exception, because you hadn't sinned. Now that
has changed. Pobre." Poor soul. "The world is like
blood. Always fluid, always changing. Friendships form, dissolve. The
only truism in life is that you can hold on to nothing." There
was that sadness again, tingeing his face as well as his voice. "You
should not have harmed Heitor."

"Look what he's
done here. He's like a rabid dog." Croaker struggled to his feet
with great difficulty. His legs felt like their bones had turned to
liquid. Outrage threatened to close his throat. "For God's sake,
he murdered Rosa." He grabbed onto the refrigerator handle to
hold himself steady. "Why do you continue to defend him?"

"Why do you
think?"

"He's damned
you, Antonio. You said it yourself." Croaker was desperately
stalling for time while he tried to regain his strength. What the
hell had happened to him? Held L Something Antonio had done
to him had robbed him of energy. "Face it. Mokoi is
gone. Whatever it was that linked you two, that made you special, no
longer exists."

Stalemate. For now,
that's the best he could expect, Croaker knew. With Rachel's life
hanging in the balance he had no other choice and Antonio knew it.
But as soon as Barbacena was dead, as soon as Majeur confirmed the
kill, the kidney would be released and Jenny could do her thing.
Then, the rules would change. Then would come the final reckoning.

"Està
terminado del todo. It is over between us, señor.
The friendship. Now we are mortal enemies. Comprende? After
midnight, who can say what will transpire? The federates
want you and they are abetted by the police. For you, there will be
nowhere to hide."

In the living room,
the soccer match was over. According to the announcer, something
called The Extreme Games was about to begin.

Accompanied by
Antonio's soft laughter, Croaker stumbled blindly outside. At the
curb, he hung on to the Mustang. But it did no good. The rich, sweet
smell of the night-blooming jasmine made him violently sick.

DAY
FIVE

1

An oppressive wind
was blowing in off the ocean. It had an evil smell, as if it had
churned up all the sins that had been buried for centuries in the
ocean floor. Croaker, crouched on the rooftop of the three-story
building on Washington and Ninth opposite the vegetarian restaurant
An Chay, could feel the pressure drop. Thickening clouds were already
so low the aquamarine and marlin blue neon lights of the Deco
building facades were hazed in eerie halos.

A storm was on its
way. Stone Tree would know how fast it would make landfall and how
bad it would be. Meanwhile, the SoBe nightlife wasn't missing a beat.
Cool music poured like syrup into the humid air, hot cars paraded by,
girls and boys, spangled in tropical colors, mingled every which way.
For them, it was a night like any other.

But somewhere, not
far from here, Juan Garcia Barbacena was arriving. Was it by private
plane that had touched down or maybe by boat outside the three-mile
limit. Maybe Bennie was pulling alongside in his midnight blue
cigarette.

Which scenario was
the right one? Croaker didn't know. Just as he didn't know whether
Bennie was friend or foe.

Thirty-three minutes
after midnight and counting.

Croaker rechecked the
Steyr and the Harris Bipod. He took another look through the Swarsky
scope, made some minor adjustments, and got used to looking at the
environment in the flat two dimensions of the scope's viewing circle.
Satisfied, he put the rifle aside and relaxed. Come what may, he was
ready.

He picked up the
Zeiss Night Owl, scanned the street below. Using binoculars very
quickly taught you the value of patience. With the field of vision so
limited, if you panned too quickly, you were sure to miss something
significant. Also, there was a rhythm.

Thirty seconds
scrutinizing the environment, looking for the target, ten seconds
relaxing. Otherwise, eye fatigue would set in, and again, you risked
missing an important element.

Croaker watched the
young faces coming and going, animated by a couple of beers, a few
joints, and the anticipation of sex. He remembered those days, when
the summers seemed endless and the word future held no
meaning. Summers made him think of fishing. Fishing made him think of
Bennie. Who was Bennie Milagros, anyway? A pal or a government
operative leading a secret life? Funny, Croaker thought,
either way, I miss him.

Instinct drove
Croaker to take up the binoculars and scan Washington Avenue in front
of An Chay. Like all street scenes, it had changed but stayed the
same. Different people, same basic configuration. Except…

Except for the young
man lounging against the fender of a black Mercedes convertible—the
new one, blunt and boxy, ugly as sin. He wore a lightweight Armani
suit and Italian loafers. His hair was long, slicked back off his
wide forehead. When he crossed his arms across his chest, Croaker
could see the muscles stretching the fabric.

Using the young man
as a focal point, Croaker tracked slowly in each direction. Just to
the left he found two more young musclemen. There were three to the
right. They had just emerged from a Mercedes sedan, also black. A
second black Mercedes sedan was parked around the corner on Ninth
Street. Croaker began looking for the gray Rolls-Royce.

At that moment, he
heard a sound behind him. It was a tiny noise, not more than what an
old door might make if it was pushed open a crack. He heard it
distinctly just the same. Nerves. Heightened tension created greater
acuity of the senses. It was instinctive, part of the primitive
animal defense mechanism that had survived centuries of increasing
civilization.

He swung the Steyr
around, half expecting to confront one of Barbacena's security
entourage. Instead, he saw Majeur coming toward him in a half-crouch.
Someone was with him. His heart almost stopped. It was Jenny.

"Majeur, what
the hell d'you think you're doing?" He was furious. "In a
couple of minutes this will be a red zone. Get her out of here."

"Lew, please
listen!" Jenny said urgently.

"Jenny, what
about Rachel? How could you leave her now?"

"Lew, please
believe me, she's in good hands. I hand-picked a team to watch over
her."

"But she doesn't
have you." The sharpness in his voice surprised

Croaker. Afraid for
Rachel's life and Jenny's safety, he turned to look down at
Washington Avenue. Here came the gray Rolls. Oh, my God, he
thought. We're all fucked now. "You promised you'd be
there when the kidney arrived."

Majeur inched
forward. "Sir, I would not have brought her unless—"

"Lew, for God's
sake—"

"Shut up, both
of you." The Steyr, balanced against his chest on the Harris
Bipod, already felt like an old and trusted friend. "I've got a
job to do. Despite what's going on here. Rachel has to be saved.
That's the only thing that matters."

"Don't you see,
that's why I've come."

Jenny was just behind
him. He could feel the heat of her body, the smell of her. The Rolls
had blacked-out windows and three stubby antennas. What did he have
in there besides cell phones? A portable computer hooked up to the
World Wide Web and the Internet? The Rolls'-srreet-side rear door was
opening. Barbacena's men were clustered around the car like the
Praetorian Guard. He was coming.

Croaker leveled the
Steyr, gaining the angle he wanted. The Steyr was equipped with two
triggers, one behind the other. The front trigger required a standard
2V4-pound pull. The one behind was a hair trigger, needing only Vi
pound of pressure to fire the rifle.

Then he heard Jenny
whispering in his ear. "Majeur came to see Rachel. That's where
I met him. I told him what I'd found because I'd been trying to call
you."

Croaker curled his
forefinger around the front trigger. "I turned it off. The last
thing I need is my cell phone ringing now." A woman was emerging
from the Rolls. Tall and slim and Oriental, she was dressed in a sea
green shantung silk suit. The Thai food taster.

"I made Majeur
bring me. I told you that I wasn't going to stand idly by. I had some
ideas of my own. After hearing your evidence against Stansky, I got
to thinking. What caused Rachel's acute renal shutdown? Stansky knew
her history; he was poisoning her by rein-troducing the sepsis into
her IVs. And I thought, What if they had poisoned Rachel in the
beginning?"

The street was
crawling with security. Barbacena's goons had begun to fan out,
methodically and systematically sectoring the immediate area. But
Jenny had caught Croaker's attention at last. "Poisoned?"
It was as if a great ray of light revealed a hidden shape in the
shadows. Now he understood the significance of the Bonitas owning the
Boneyard. Rachel didn't OD on the drug cocktail. The

Bonitas had poisoned
her. But so what? He was still caught in the awful vise. He had to
kill Barbacena to save Rachel's life.

Across the street,
the Thai taster was talking to one of the security goons. Then, she
bent down, apparently delivering a message to someone still inside
the Rolls. Barbacena. The Thai taster said something to the goon, and
he ordered two men into the restaurant.

The Thai taster
stepped away from the Rolls. A figure was emerging. Black
elephant-skin loafers, black tropical-weight linen suit, white voile
silk band-collared shirt. A flash of gold at his wrist as he put a
hand on the roof of the Rolls.

Croaker recognized
him immediately: Juan Garcia Barbacena. The target. Croaker pulled
the front trigger, cocking the action, then moved his hand backward.
He rested his forefinger lightly on the hair trigger. Now only the
slightest squeeze was all that stood between the target and oblivion.

He felt Jenny's hand
on his back and tried not to react to it. "This is why I had to
come. To stop you. Rachel was poisoned. Along with the drugs you'd
expect to find, her blood showed traces of ethylene glycol
by-products."

"Right,"
Jenny said. "It's also an almost perfect poison. It's odorless,
tasteless, and you only need to ingest three ounces. Put it in a soda
or coffee and she'd never know. With Rachel's drug history, plus the
fact she only had one kidney, they were betting it would go
undetected. And they were right."

The Thai taster was
on the sidewalk. Barbacena was turning away from the building where
they all crouched. In a moment, he would disappear through the
doorway to An Chay and the opportunity would be lost forever.

Barbacena's face hung
as large as a full moon in front of him. He steeled his finger
against the hair trigger for the last time. He took a deep breath,
let it out slowly and evenly. When it was all gone, his finger would
tighten against the hair trigger and Barbacena would hit the pavement
with half a head.

"What good does
knowing this do me," he said, "except to make me hate the
Bonitas all the more?"

"I've put her on
a treatment protocol," Jenny rushed on urgently. "Ethanol
IV, which will slow the formation of glycolic acid. And we're
continuing to flush her kidney."

"But they didn't
destroy it. There is damage to the renal tubules, but the human body
is a marvelous machine. Once we flush the glycolic acid from her
system, they'll regenerate in a matter of months. Her kidney will be
rehabilitated." She gripped his shoulders. "Do you
understand, Lew? Rachel doesn't need the transplant. You don't have
to go through with this hellish bargain."

Through the Swarsky
scope, Croaker watched the Thai taster precede Juan Garcia Barbacena
into the restaurant. They vanished from his view like game fish,
briefly seen, plunging into the depths of the ocean.

He put the Steyr
aside and sat down on the roof. "So, it's over." He felt as
if he weighed a thousand pounds. Coming so close to killing someone
in cold blood was like standing at the edge of an abyss—once
you took the next step you had no idea how far you would fall. Now,
to be able to back away was a relief almost too intense to absorb.

Croaker's head was
buzzing with an excess of adrenaline. "Why didn't you discover
this poisoning before?"

Jenny, sitting beside
him, said softly, "We were going on basic assumptions. Rachel
had a great deal of controlled substances in her system. She was a
chronic drug abuser. She was in acute renal shutdown. A girl of her
age, what else could we think?"

She never took her
gaze off Croaker's face. "But then I had the blood samples I'd
taken from her for my drug abuse study mede-vaced to me and I took a
long hard look at them. There was no reason for us to have done so
earlier because we were looking for a drug O.D. and that's exactly
what we found. The circumstances and the symptomology were absolutely
consistent.

"We would have
seen the ethylene glycol in a minute had we done a kidney biopsy, but
Rachel's condition was already too critical to even consider such an
invasive test. However, when I analyzed the blood I'd drawn from her
for my research program I saw it was highly acidic. Ethylene glycol,
itself, is more or less harmless. But when the body starts to break
it down you get glycolic acid, which is terribly destructive. We were
lucky on two counts: because she only has one kidney, they needed to
use a minimum dose to cause the renal failure. Also, the dialysis was
the best thing we could have done for her because it kept the kidney
flushed. If not for the sepsis Stansky introduced, she might have
begun to recover by now."

Croaker took her
hand. "It was incredibly brave of you to come here."

"And not as
foolhardy as you thought." She gave him a smile.

"It was a
gamble." Croaker looked past her to where Majeur was standing, a
slim silhouette in the misty neon glow.

"It is ten
minutes after one," Majeur said as he came across the roof. "I
was scheduled to call Antonio by one the latest."

"We've got to
get out of here." Croaker left the materials of the assassin's
trade where they were. He had no desire to touch them again, and
Majeur had never wanted possession of them in the first place.

As they walked to the
rear of the roof, Croaker said to Majeur, "I have some bad news.
The Leyes are dead."

Majeur stopped in his
tracks. A strong gust of wind ruffled his hair and blew open his
jacket. "Ay de mi. Estrella—?"

Croaker nodded.
"Heitor killed them. I got there too late."

A look like flint
came into Majeur's eyes. "It was her greatest fear. But she knew
one day the Bonitas would come for her." Majeur shook his head,
fighting back deep emotion. "Bennie will be sick at heart."

Croaker took a deep
breath, tried to still the hammering of his heart.

"Lew,"
Jenny said, "what's the matter?"

Majeur looked at him.
"Señor, you appear ill."

Croaker said, "Tell
me, Majeur. Do you mean Bennie Milagros?"

Majeur nodded. "We
all know each other for years, sir. How could it be otherwise?
Bennie, Estrella, Antonio, Heitor, myself. Hu-maita was the glue that
bound us together, you see. We all grew up in his back pocket. It was
tragic when he was killed. We all flew apart like seeds spat from a
mouth."

Croaker put a hand to
his head to try to stop the sudden throbbing. "Bennie swore to
me that he didn't know you. What reason would he have to lie to me?"

Majeur shook his
head. "That I cannot say, señor."

Was Bennie friend or
foe? Croaker wondered. First he and Croaker were the best of buddies.
Then, it seemed as if he had a secret life with the ACTF. It seemed
as if he had used Croaker. But the damning information on the floppy
disk that linked him to the top-secret ACTF operation in Mexico could
have been planted by the Bonitas. Friend, again? And now this. Bennie
had lied. So what was true and what was false? Croaker had
been returned to Majeur's Kalahari, whose shifting dunes brought
constantly changing fortunes, where allies became enemies as easily
as sand slipped between your fingers.

"Unless it was
because of the bones."

Croaker stared into
Majeur's face. Heitor had mentioned bones at the Leyeses' just before
Antonio had intervened.

"What do you
mean, the bones?"

Majeur looked
abruptly uneasy. "This is not something one easily
tells—perdoname, señor—an outsider. You
see, Bennie's grandfather was a sukia. Among the Guarani,
such an extraordinary healer appears perhaps once in a man's
lifetime. Often, it is far less. In any case, the sukia is
venerated beyond any other healer because his powers are so great.
When he dies, it is said these extraordinary powers live on. In his
healing stones—his spirit-catchers. And in his bones. This is
why his corpse is burnt on a pyre—so the bones might be
cleansed of flesh and preserved."

Majeur looked at his
watch. "Sir, it is very dangerous to remain here. We must leave.
Now."

Croaker glanced at
Jenny, nodded. In single file, they went down the vertical metal
ladder of the fire escape. Majeur went first, then Jenny, with
Croaker the last off the roof.

On the street,
Croaker turned to Majeur. "What happened to Humaità's
bones?"

"I think you can
guess," Majeur said as they trotted toward the Mustang.
"Following the funeral pyre, the bones disappeared. They were
stolen."

Croaker unlocked the
door and they piled inside—Jenny in the front passenger's seat,
Majeur in back. "Do you know by whom?"

"I have no
proof." Majeur settled himself in the backseat. "But it
seemed clear to me that it must have been Heitor and Antonio. They
coveted Humaità's power. They killed him. Why would they do
that unless they could take his power and keep it like lightning in a
bottle?"

Croaker thought of
the extreme secrecy—not to mention urgency—of Bennie's
request to made a sea rendezvous at midnight on the Captain Sumo.
As he fired up the ignition, he said, "Majeur, how did Barbacena
arrive in Miami? By plane or by boat?"

"Boat,"
Majeur said. "A plane would have been too insecure. But the boat
would not have landed. Again, too much risk. A launch would have been
sent out to get him and his people."

Is that what Bennie
had tried to inveigle out of Croaker? A means of transport for
Barbacena? But nothing about Bennie and Barbacena made sense.
According to Rafe Roubinnet, Bennie wanted Barbacena dead because
Barbacena had murdered Theresa Marquesa Barbacena, the daughter of
Bennie's mentor. Then why had Bennie allowed Barbacena to gain such
an exalted position in Latin America? Why hadn't Bennie sought
revenge before this?

Once again, Croaker
felt himself enmeshed in a web of lies. Who could he trust? Jenny,
surely—and Rafe. Most likely Majeur. But beyond that he could
be sure of no one, not even Ross Darling. Government agents
invariably had their own agendas, private bureaucratic skirmishes
they were bent on winning. Darling was no different. I'll be
damned, Croaker thought, if I'll let myself be a pawn in the
insane war between him and Spaulding Gunn.

He turned the corner
onto Washington Avenue. Up ahead was An Chay, where Juan Garcia
Barbacena was contentedly earing his vegetarian dinner before his
meeting with Gunn. Croaker could imagine the scene: the goons
stationed at the four corners of the room, the Thai taster in her sea
green shantung suit daintily nibbling at each dish as it came
steaming from the kitchen. And Barbacena, famished from his journey,
digging in with a macho gusto.

Even this far away,
the Mustang rocked crazily on its shocks. Croaker slammed on the
brakes as the restaurant's windows blew out and debris from its
interior hurtled into the street.

"Christ,"
Majeur cried. "A bomb!"

And Croaker thought,
Heitor! He didn't trust me to get the job done, and he was right.
He had his own plan going.

Jenny was already out
the Mustang's door. Croaker shouted after her to stay put, then raced
after her, passing the Mercedes convertible. The blast had blown it
over on its side. Fortunately, its steel frame had acted like a
shield to protect the slow-moving traffic on Washington and the
pedestrians across the street. Still, kids sat on the sidewalk or
stood dazed, hands to their heads. Smoke streamed from the
ripped-open restaurant. As if that was a kind of signal, someone
started screaming.

Crowds were forming
with alarming speed. Soon, Croaker knew, it would be impossible to
get away in the Mustang.

He saw Jenny kneeling
beside a young girl who'd been caught in the welter of flying glass
and wood shards, and he ran to help her. Jenny was cradling her head,
talking to her as she worked to stanch the flow of blood and assess
the severity of her wounds. Croaker did as Jenny directed him,
ripping clothing into makeshift tourniquets, moving the less severely
wounded away from the smoke, fire, and debris. As he and Jenny
reached another body, he heard the first sirens. They were coming at
speed.

Croaker felt a chill
go through him. Even with this kind of chaos, he couldn't afford to
be here when the cops arrived.

"Jenny," he
said. "Christ, Jenny, we've got to get out of here!"

She turned to him.
She was spattered with blood. He opened his mouth to say something
but her expression stopped him.

"Lew, I know you
can't stay." The sirens were louder now. "The cops are
coming and I know they're looking for you. But I'm a doctor and there
are people here who need me. I have a duty."

He looked down at the
bloody young girl they were tending, and nodded.

"Go on."
She pushed him sternly away. But he could see tears glittering in the
corners of her eyes.

"Jenn, I—"

She brushed past him,
continuing to tend to the wounded. The siren was drawing closer.

Majeur had wormed his
way past them. He was now standing quite near the gaping entrance to
the burnt-out restaurant.

Croaker called to
him. "Majeur, what the hell are you doing? Get away from there!"

"Not yet, señor.
I must find out what happened in there."

Flames licked and
curled and the oily smoke had thickened. There was a terrible
sweetish stink in the air that could only come from one source:
incinerated human beings.

"What happened?"
Croaker shouted. "I'll tell you what happened. Barbacena and his
entire cast of characters are dead. Look at it in there, Majeur. It's
like a blast furnace. No one could have survived."

Majeur, one hand
shielding his face, moved closer, peering into the smoke and
flame-filled interior. "There is a back entrance. Perhaps they
had some forewarning. Perhaps some of them escaped."

"You're insane."
Croaker moved to go after Majeur. More sirens screamed in the night.
To Croaker they sounded like the howling of hunting dogs who'd caught
the scent of their prey.

At the edge of the
blistered interior, Majeur paused and looked back at Croaker. "Madre
de Dios, señor. ¡Vamos! The cops are only seconds
away!"

"I'm not going
to let you get caught in there," Croaker said.

"All right."
Majeur nodded. "But to be safe wait for me in the car. Give me
three minutes. Señor, I beg of you. I must do this."
His gaze shifted as the first of the police patrol cars screeched to
a halt at the edge of the growing throng. "For favor, señor.
La pelota està aun en el tejado," The game isn't
over yet.

Croaker watched Jenny
talking to the wounded and dazed victims while she worked on them
with tenderness and efficiency. She had the true gift of the healer.
It was as if there was an aura around her that eased people's pain
and stilled their terror.

He made his way
through the thickening crowd toward the Mustang. He had to fight like
a salmon swimming upstream; everyone else was pushing relentlessly
toward the locus of the bomb blast.

Back inside the
Mustang he turned the ignition. To make sure he wasn't wedged in by
traffic, he had to drive up onto the sidewalk facing away from the
site of the disaster.

He turned around,
staring through the rear window at the chaos. More patrol cars, their
lights flashing, had drawn up. Uniformed cops were making their way
to the scene, others were working crowd control. Still others were
assisting the first of the emergency medical people who had arrived
in ambulances. Croaker could see Jenny hard at work. An EMS paramedic
knelt beside her. She spoke to him, gesturing, and he nodded. They
rose and she took him on a brief tour of her makeshift triage area.
He called for the folding gurneys to take the most seriously wounded
away.

Fire engines screamed
their entrance, and now more of the cops were needed to clear a path
for the firefighters lugging hoses. Connections were made to
hydrants, and the water was turned on. Soon the bomb squad would
arrive.

Where the hell was
Majeur? Croaker wondered. He had less than a minute to get out of the
interior before he was caught by the first contingent of firefighters
in h're-retardant gear and the vanguard of police. In response to all
this heightened activity, the crowd surged forward.

Now, at its
periphery, near the blackened front of An Chay, Croaker saw Majeur
emerge. He looked past the oncoming rescue teams, trying to pick out
the turquoise Mustang. Croaker opened the door, stood on the floor
rim, and lifted his biomechanical hand. It reflected the revolving
lights back at Majeur.

Majeur's face lit up
when he saw Croaker and he began to make his way out of the interior.
It was then that Croaker saw Heitor emerge like a wraith from the
crowd. His twice-broken nose was still bandaged, but the laceration
Croaker had made in his cheek was bare—a clean red steak,
glistening with unguent.

Croaker shouted and
pointed at Heitor.

Majeur, unaware,
waved back. Then Heitor was beside him.

"Got you,
maricone!" Croaker could read Heitor's lips.

Majeur started,
turned, and Heitor's right arm moved. From a distance, it seemed as
innocent a gesture as one man shaking another's hand. But then
Croaker caught a quick metallic flash as the scalpel blade buried
itself in Majeur's side.

Croaker was off and
running toward the bombed-out restaurant.

Majeur's eyes opened
wide and his lips pulled back from his teeth as if he had eaten
something very sweet. He staggered, but Heitor, ever helpful, kept
him on his feet.

Croaker hit the outer
shell of the crowd and was slowed to a crawl. No avid onlooker seemed
inclined to let him through. He was obliged to claw and muscle people
aside, to ignore curses, wild punches, and kicks in order to make any
progress at all.

Up ahead, Heitor,
acting like a Good Samaritan, hustled Majeur away from the rescue
crew. They raced by him, spreading out into the interior as the hoses
were brought up. Heitor brought Majeur to the periphery of this
activity and gently, almost lovingly, lay Majeur onto the sidewalk.

Helplessly, Croaker
watched him twist the scalpel trying to get through the intercostal
cartilage between Majeur's ribs and find the heart.

Croaker was close
enough to gain a better view of Heitor, but still too far away to be
able to intervene. As he continued to squirm his way through the
melee, he watched Heitor's head swivel like a dog on point. Heitor
rose and began to move through the triage area as if he were
invisible. No one noticed him or asked his business there. Either
they were all too busy or he'd worked some Hetd I spell.

He moved slowly,
methodically, as if he were in no hurry. At last, he came to where
Jenny was working on a young girl with bad burns. He stood behind
her, gazing down at her meditatively. Then, he turned. As if with
uncanny knowledge he looked right at Croaker. For a split instant the
whole world ceased to exist. An enigmatic smile transformed Heitor's
lips and he turned back to the work at hand.

Croaker, frantic, did
everything but hurl people from his path. But he was trapped in the
terrible surge of the crowd. Dense, sweaty, keyed to the excitement
of the moment, they had merged into a solid body that gave but did
not break.

He saw Heitor
standing over Jenny. Backlit by the smoke and fire Heitor's curling
copper-colored hair appeared to be made of flames. Croaker shouted
but to no avail. He clawed and elbowed his way forward in time to see
Heitor's hands closing around the back of Jenny's neck. Didn't anyone
notice? Couldn't they see what was going to happen? This was Heitor's
revenge: to murder Jenny in front of Croaker's eyes.

Heitor's right hand
touched the side of Jenny's neck. His left hand seemed to stroke her
hair. Jenny's head turned to look up. She saw Heitor's battered face,
which was what he wanted. He stared down at her. She stiffened as his
grip strengthened. Croaker struggled in his agonizing trap. She was
going to die and there wasn't anything he could do about it.

"No!" he
screamed. "No!"

Antonio, at Heitor's
side, took hold of his brother's wrists. Antonio, like Heitor before
him, had appeared like smoke out of nowhere. Heitor's head whipped
around, and he screamed. Antonio shook his head firmly. His whole
body stiffened, and Heitor released Jenny.

Croaker broke through
the inner ring at last, racing past a fat man and a pair of
bodybuilders. But the Bonitas were gone, swallowed up in the chaos of
the surging throng.

Croaker took three
steps toward Jenny before his way was blocked by two uniformed cops.

Croaker took a step
forward and the second uniform put his hand out. "I said step
back, sir." His other hand had gone to the butt of his holstered
service revolver.

Croaker paused,
gazing over the uniforms' shoulder. He saw Jenny tending to an open
wound in a victim on a folding gurney. He craned his neck, saw that
it was Majeur. Accompanied by one of the EMS paramedics guiding the
gurney, she passed within the protective semicircle of cops on crowd
control. Still tending to Majeur, she climbed into the back of an
ambulance as the driver slid it inside. The paramedic jumped in after
her, the driver climbed behind the wheel, and the ambulance took off.

Croaker relaxed. At
least she was safe from Heitor. He began to back off. The last thing
he needed now was a confrontation with the police.

"Hey, wait a
minute!" the first uniform said. "I think I seen this guy.
Ray, didn't his photo come over the APB wire couple hours ago?"

As he drew his
service revolver, Croaker ducked away, eeling into the crowd.

"Hey!" he
heard the first uniform shout. "Hey, you! Stop!"

It was easier to move
away from the locus of interest because every spot he vacated allowed
someone to step closer. People were happy to let him through. He took
a circuitous route back to the Mustang. He fired the ignition,
slammed it in gear, and drove off down the sidewalk until he was
clear of the traffic tie-up. Then he floored the accelerator.

As he headed
away from, the An Chay bombing, he plucked out his cell phone,
punched in a number. When he heard the familiar voice in his ear, he
felt his heart skip a beat. Stone Tree had said to him, "When
it comes to people, you must stand aside from anger, antipathy, and
fear. These emotions dog the senses. When you feel them you cannot
experience the tightness of the situation. On the contrary, every
thing seems wrong, and you take action from that false reading."

"Hey, Bennie.
I've missed the hell outa you."

"Lewis?"

"Listen, about
what happened in the hospital—we have to talk about that,"
Croaker said as he zipped around a Ford sedan. He reaccelerated.

"Something's
changed, you wanta talk about it now?"

"Lots,"
Croaker said. "For one thing, there's an APB out for me."

"Say what?"

Croaker, listening
carefully, heard the sharp note of surprise in Bennie's voice. But
was it genuine? There was a gamble he was going to have to take.
"Also, I know why you wanted me and the Captain Sumo."
He ran a light on the amber, turned west. "Bennie, did you get
them?"

"Get what?"
A certain wariness had slipped into Bennie's tone.

"The bones,
Bennie."

"Bones? What the
hell you talking about?"

"Don't bullshit
me. Your grandfather's bones. That's what it's all about, isn't it,
this bad blood between you and the Bonitas? They murdered Humaità,
then stole his bones after he was cremated. You've been trying to get
them back from Heitor and Antonio, right?"

"You must be
cracked. Why would I care about a pile of bones?"

"Because all
your grandfather's Hetd I power—all that's left of
him—his entire legacy—is in them like living marrow."

Silence on the line.
Croaker crossed the MacArthur Causeway, gaining the mainland. The
highrise skyline of Miami loomed in front of him. And memories of his
near-fatal encounter at the Brick-ell Bridge.

At length, Bennie
said, "Who the hell've you been talking to?"

"People you
apparently didn't want me speaking to."

Croaker could hear
Bennie take an audible breath. "You know, amigo, you're
right. We do have to talk. Right fucking now. Where are
you?"

Croaker told him.

"Good,"
Bennie said. "I'm in the 'Glades, not so far away. Get your
Anglo ass over to Flamingo pronto. And, amigo, make damn
sure you aren't followed."

"Don't worry,"
Croaker said. "With the police APB I'm not likely to make a
mistake."

"See that you
don't," Bennie said. "Both our lives depend on it."

2

Croaker took the
Dolphin Expressway west to Florida's Turnpike. From there he headed
south to Florida City, a small cluster of seedy family-style
restaurants tricked out with neon and flashing lights to attract
tourists heading for the Keys or Everglades National Park. After
filling the Mustang's gas tank, he hung a right, heading into the
inky blackness.

Within half a mile it
seemed as if he'd left all vestiges of civilization behind. There
were few lights and fewer structures. Just solitary clusters of tin
shacks for migrant workers tending the crops. He passed the State
Corrections facility. Three bleak miles on, he was in the Everglades.

Flamingo was in the
heart of the southern Everglades. It was just southeast of Cape
Sable, on the southern tip of the Florida mainland. From there,
fishermen, naturalists, and houseboaters alike had access to more
than two hundred square miles of backcountry waterways, mangrove
swamps, and buoy-marked channels clear out to the Keys.

All the way down
Croaker watched his rearview mirror. Through Florida City there was
plenty of traffic behind him. But no cops. He changed lanes
frequently just the same, if only out of habit. He was not by nature
paranoid.

Once outside Florida
City the vehicles behind him were as scarce as oases in a desert.
Their headlights shone a long way on the flat, wet stretch of road.
He'd been watching the same pair of headlights behind him for some
time when he decided to pull off to the side of the road. He killed
the engine and the Mustang's lights. The vehicle was a dark-colored
Dodge Ram truck, covered with the alkali dust and pale mud of the
fields. It slowed as it came abreast of the Mustang, then pulled over
just in front.

Croaker tensed. He
watched the driver's door swing open. A rangy man in jeans, dusty
boots, and a weather-stained cowboy hat walked slowly over to him. He
was carrying a shotgun casually at his side. He came up to the
Mustang and leaned down to the open window.

"Howdy."

"Evening."
There was a small, uncomfortable silence while the man worked a chaw
of tobacco around his mouth. He peered into the Mustang's interior as
if looking for contraband. "Need any help? Car okay?"

"Everything's
fine," Croaker said. "I've been driving all day. I got a
little tired and decided to pull over for a while."

"Just to the
park visitors' center. Picking up my girlfriend." Croaker put a
sheepish look on his face. "We had a kind of set-to couple of
days back. You know how it is."

There was another
uncomfortable silence while the man's flinty eyes searched Croaker's
face for answers to questions Croaker could only guess at.

"Better git on
over there." The man spat a dark blob onto the ground. "She
were my gal I wouldn't care for her bein' out here at night alone."

"Just about to
do that," Croaker said. "Thanks."

The man nodded and
sauntered back to his truck. Croaker kept track of it as he drove
away. About a half mile on, it made a right down a side road.

Croaker continued on
to Flamingo without further incident. Sporadic spits of rain greeted
him as he drove into the National Park Visitors Center. He drove past
the lodge—a row of attached cabins, looking very 1950s, then
the restaurant, now long closed for the night. He rolled through the
deserted parking lot onto the marina's concrete apron.

One light was on at
the side of the activities shack. Behind it, lights at the dock's
edge picked out the boats used for backcountry tours and cruises on
Florida and Whitewater Bays. They lay to, tied securely in their
slips. They were, by necessity, shallow-draft boats, since the water
rarely went deeper than five feet and was often no more than a foot
or so. It was a scene both serene and bucolic. It reminded Croaker
all over again why Stone Tree preferred to live down here in the
backcountry.

As he got out of the
Mustang, a figure detached itself from the shadows of the activities
shack. The light illuminated Bennie's face. He was dressed in black,
just like the ACTF agent on Brickell Bridge had been. From his left
hand dangled a pair of infrared binoculars for seeing in the dark.
"Well, amigo, I could hardly have anticipated this."

"Shut up."

"Muy bien.
I count to ten." Bennie took out a cigar, although it was
improbable he'd be able to get it lighted in this wind and rain. "I
take into account the state of your, like, agitation an' I, you know,
don't take offense."

"What is that?"
Croaker asked. "A warning or a testimonial?"

Bennie gave an
explosive laugh. He rolled the unlit cigar around his mouth like it
was a Snickers bar. "You're one pissed-off hombre, you
know that? You sure you're not Latino? You definitely got the temper,
muy caliente."

"Cut the
entertainment. It's skin deep. I've worked out enough of what's going
on underneath. Bastard." Rain dribbled down Croaker's collar,
running like sweat down his spine. "You knew Majeur. You knew
he'd extorted me into killing Barbacena and you did nothing to stop
it. Because you wanted Barbacena dead."

"Why would I
want that?"

"Javier
Marquesa. He was your mentor in Asuncion. Barbacena married his
daughter and then murdered her."

"Knowledge is
power, eh, amigo?" Bennie seemed unsurprised that
Croaker knew this. "True. Juan Garcia's death has been a dream
of mine. But I could never, you know, find the means. He very quickly
made himself invulnerable."

"That ended
tonight. Barbacena's dead. He was sitting at ground zero, eating his
rice and tofu, when Heitor's bomb went off."

Bennie's eyes were
dreamy. "At last." He seemed to have relaxed slightly, as
if a chronic ache had receded. "I thank God you came through
this okay."

"Spare me."
Croaker turned up his collar. The rain tasted salty, like tears. "Did
you set me up, Bennie? Do you work for the U.S. government?"

The sadness returned
to Bennie's face. "I'd never, like, do that to you. We're
amigos."

"Jesus. You must
have a very fucking twisted idea of friendship."

"Maybe. I
wouldn't know. To be honest, I've never had a friend before."

The two men stood
facing each other. Beside them, the Mustang's engine ticked slowly
over. Croaker searched Bennie's face, but he could find nothing of
significance there. No signpost, no hint of what was going on in this
enigmatic man's mind.

"I saw
documentation that a certain agent is ramrodding a top-secret Mexican
operation, arming and training the insurgents in the south for a
political coup. He's code-named Sero." Croaker saw Bennie's eyes
open wide and he nodded. "Yeah. Estrella Leyes told me about the
nickname your grandfather called you. Sero. The mountain."

Croaker ignored the
melancholia. "Exactly. Now you know how I feel. We saved each
other from the tiger shark; we buried Sonia together. I gave you my
trust. That's sacred, Bennie. It's a secret between two people. But
you lied to me, used our friendship. And now, what do you expect me
to believe?"

"You still have
my trust, Lewis."

"What the hell
d'you mean by that? Is that you in the government computer, Bennie?
Are you the ghost in the machine? Right now, T wouldn't bet against
it. This operation, it's like a well-oiled machine, running day and
night, bringing us closer to the moment when elements within the U.S.
government and their big business partners will be running Mexico for
their own economic gains. That kind of thing takes a load of
planning, not to mention big-time bucks. But we're talking Latin
America here. Money and schemes are useless without a great deal of
know-how. You understand what I mean by know-how, don't you, Bennie?
Connections, connections, connections. Nothing gets done in Latin
America without crawling into bed with the corrupt honchos down
there. That's your stock-in-trade."

"Maybe so,
amigo. But do you think I'm the only one?"

The rising wind
whistled through the marina, set the boats to rocking. A sudden burst
of rain rattled the rigging.

Since Croaker had
made no reply Bennie decided to try another tack. "About these
people, Lewis—Estrella and Majeur, the ones I never told you—"

"They're dead,
Bennie. All of them, except maybe Majeur who, if he isn't dead
probably wishes he was." Croaker's balled fist struck Bennie
full on the jaw. Croaker was an expert and Bennie never saw the punch
coming. The cigar went flying and he went down hard, his backside
hitting the concrete apron.

Croaker looked down
at him. "You stupid bastard. Look what your blood-game with the
Bonitas has done. First Sonia, then Vonda Shepherd. Now Estrella,
Pablo Leyes, and Majeur. All dead." Bennie sucked meditatively
on a tooth. Croaker hoped it was broken. "But what the hell
would you care? By your own admission, you never had a friend in your
life."

"Except you,
amigo."

"Stop calling me
that." Croaker dug the soul-catcher out of his pocket, held it
in his palm. "I'll tell you the truth, Bennie. I was touched
when you gave me your grandfather's spirit-stone. Now, I honestly
don't know why you did it. Maybe it was some kind of goddamn bribe to
get me out on the boat at midnight. What did you need me for, Bennie?
Did you want me to transport you to the backcountry rendezvous point
so you could pick up the bones?" He held the spirit-stone for
Bennie's to take. "Where are they, Hu-maita's bones?"

Bennie stood up.
"Don't be waving that around. If it should, like, fall into the
wrong hands…" He refused Croaker's offer. "You an'
I, we've got no healing powers. But Antonio and Heitor could, like,
get every secret my grandfather put into it. That stone is, like, a
storehouse of his spells, chants, an' healing."

Croaker rolled the
smooth soul-catcher around his fingertips. He recalled how it had
drawn Rachel out of her coma, how it had drawn the truth from Heitor.
"Take it, Bennie. I don't want it."

But Bennie just shook
his head. "A gift should never be returned. Otherwise, it
becomes an instrument of evil."

"You stubborn
sonuvabitch."

Bennie started and
Croaker whirled around. A pair of headlights had entered the
compound.

"God hear me,
Lewis, I warned you our lives would be forfeit if you were followed
here."

"But I wasn't,"
Croaker said. "I can guarantee it."

The headlights were
coming straight for them.

"Yeah?"
Bennie thrust the binoculars into Croaker's hand. "Tell me what
you see."

Croaker, focusing the
lenses, saw a pale panel truck pop into view in the infrared lenses.
"Sonuvabitch! The Bonitas! How did they know—"

He shoved the
binoculars back at Bennie, got down on his hands and knees. Shining
his pocket flashlight beneath the Mustang, he let out another oath.

"What is it,
amigo?"

Croaker stood up.
"Miniature homing device. On the underside of the car."

"Nice touch,"
Bennie said. "Those fucking Bonitas."

The panel truck raced
around the last turn on its way to the marina.

"Shit!"
Croaker said, and they both began to run toward the boats rocking at
their berths.

"This one!"
Bennie pointed to a dark-green twenty-five-footer as he untied the
bow line. "I was just out on it."

Croaker leapt onto
the deck, got behind the wheel. The keys were in the ignition and he
started up the engine. The white panel truck careened through the
parking lot as Bennie flipped off the aft line.

"Ready!"
Bennie shouted as the truck screeched to a halt beside the Mustang.
Antonio swung out while the truck was still rocking on its shocks. He
hit the concrete running. Heitor was just behind him.

Croaker had the boat
in gear and was steering it clear of the dock. He spun the wheel
around as the boat cleared the far pilings. White wake churned up as
he increased speed.

"Nowhere to hide
now." Antonio stood on the end of the dock staring balefully
after them. "Sero, do you hear me?"

Croaker risked a
glance back. So the Bonitas knew Humaità called Bennie Sero.
This was nuts. One minute he was sure Bennie was the ACTF operation
mastermind, the next he was equally certain that Antonio and Heitor
had set Bennie up. Was "Sero" a true ghost in the machine,
a figment of the Bonitas' warped game?

Heitor was running
down the length of the dock, paralleling them. He ran full tilt,
keeping them in sight as he neared the far end of the dock.

"Crazy bastard!"
Bennie said. "What the fuck's he up to?"

Croaker saw Antonio
hold his right arm out toward the boat. He looked like Moses about to
part the Red Sea. "Christ, Heitor's going to make a run at us,"
Croaker said.

The boat was in a
narrow channel; there wasn't much room to maneuver. He turned the
wheel to starboard just as Heitor made his running leap off the end
of the pier.

As he did so, Antonio
opened his hand. In it, a black stain no larger than a quarter. A
soul-catcher. Antonio began to chant, the words swept away by the
foul weather.

Heitor opened his
arms wide. He looked as if he were flying across the water, propelled
by the rising wind. Surely, it couldn't be Antonio's magic.

Against all odds, he
made the front of the boat. His shoes skidded and he rolled heavily
onto the deck.

Bennie hurried
forward. "You're one sorry-looking fucker." Then he kicked
Heitor in the ribs.

Croaker, keeping one
eye on the narrow channel overhung with mangrove and vines and the
other on the dock, saw Antonio raise his arm higher and pick up the
pace of his chanting.

But Bennie was past
hearing. "¡Hip de putana!" He spat on Heitor
and kicked him again.

Something—a
particularly strong gust of wind—rocked the boat. It caught
Bennie by surprise. He lurched and Heitor, reaching up, punched him
in the groin.

Bennie went to his
knees, gasping. Croaker saw the glint of Heitor's scalpel and he
shouted, "Bennie! Catch!"

As Bennie turned, he
threw the soul-catcher. Bennie reached up for it, but Heitor was
quicker. His left hand darted out and intercepted the throw. There
was an instant's flash of heat and light and Heitor began to laugh.

He easily parried
Bennie's thrown punch. His hand with the stone in it pressed against
the side of Bennie's neck. Bennie went down as if poleaxed. Heitor
straddled him, and the scalpel glittered as it moved down toward
Bennie's throat.

Croaker threw the
boat into neutral, turned off the ignition, and ran forward. In his
mind, he saw Heitor stabbing Majeur. He'd been too late to save the
lawyer; would he be too late again?

He hit Heitor with
such force that the blade missed its mark. It penetrated Bennie's
chest, slicing through the heavy muscle as if it were butter. Bennie
screamed. Croaker's momentum drove Heitor sideways, into the side of
the boat. He grunted, spun, and buckled as Croaker smashed his elbow
into the side of his head.

The spirit-stone
skittered along the deck and Croaker dove for it. That was a mistake.
He knew it the moment he was fully extended and vulnerable. He should
have taken care of Heitor first. Heitor drove a knee into the small
of his back. Lights exploded behind Croaker's eyes, and he rolled an
instant before the point of the scalpel embedded itself in the deck
where he'd just been. He struck out, but he had no power behind it,
and Heitor brushed it aside.

Heitor grabbed the
spirit-stone and, in almost the same motion, smashed the back of his
hand into Croaker's face. Dazed, Croaker felt himself engulfed in a
kind of eerie lethargy. Years ago, he'd gone elk hunting in the
mountains of Montana and had almost frozen to death. This was much
the same feeling. A kind of detachment, a sense of slipping into a
twilight world where nothing mattered and any movement was
unimaginable.

He watched with
unblinking eyes as Heitor slowly opened the hand with which he'd
struck Croaker. There, embedded in the center of the palm, was
Humaità's spirit stone.

Heitor's bandaged
face leered down at him. "See how it works? I have your soul. In
here. You're mine, maricone. Fight it all you wish, it was
meant to be." He crouched down in front of Croaker. "I had
a dream that foretold this moment. In the dream I smelled the
mangrove. I felt the rain against my face. I felt as clearly as one
sees a beacon in the night the pain you have inflicted on me. I used
my scalpel—and I discovered the mystery of life and death."
He was grinning like a jack-o'-lantern. "I held your bloody head
in my hands."

He placed the
spirit-stone almost reverently against the center of Croaker's
forehead. With his other hand, he plucked the scalpel from the deck.
"I want you to feel it all," he said. "I want you to
see your death coming. It was foretold in the dark stone. It is in my
eyes. Soon it will be all you know." He moved the scalpel to a
position level with Croaker's throat. "It's coming closer,
señor. You see? Yes." The scalpel moved. "Here
it is."

Heitor was flung
sideways as the loud report echoed through the mangrove swamps.
Croaker's gaze swept from the blood leaking from Heitor's shoulder to
Bennie, prone on the deck, aiming a snub-nosed .22. Wood chips flew
as Bennie got off another shot, but Heitor was no longer there. He'd
flung himself over the side, into the channel.

Bennie, clearly
exhausted, dropped his arm. The .22 clattered against the deck.
"Amiga?" His voice was soft and hoarse.

Croaker blinked
several times. Blood coursed back into him. The unnatural lethargy
was lifting. He levered himself up, staggered to where Bennie lay.
Inspecting the wound, he saw that it was deep. Bennie lay in a
widening pool of blood.

"Not so good,
huh, Lewis?"

"Don't worry."
Croaker began to work on him as best he could. He stripped off his
own shirt, cut it up with one stainless-steel fingernail. Then, he
began to bind up Bennie's wound. The main thing now was to stop the
heavy bleeding.

"Worry?"
Bennie tried to laugh, then gasped as the pain threatened to
overwhelm him. "Why should I worry? I've got a mortal wound and
we're out in the middle of nowhere."

"Shut up."

"Once again,
I'll ignore your insult. Under . . . under the circumstances, it's,
like, the least I can do." Bennie grimaced as Croaker bound the
wound ever more tightly. "No, I won't worry. We can't, like, go
back to the dock because Antonio's waiting for us. And somewhere in
the water Heitor is swimming like a shark."

"Forget Heitor."
Croaker was just about finished. It wasn't much, but for the time
being it'd have to do. "He's bleeding like a stuck pig. He'll
attract every croc within a five-mile radius."

"You still don't
get it, do you, amigo? These are the Bonitas. They eat
crocodiles for tea." Bennie's gaze held Croaker's. "Plus,
he's got the soul-catcher."

Croaker shone his
pocket flashlight around the deck. No sign of the spirit-stone. He
got up. No time to worry about it now. He went aft. The boat had
drifted into an outcropping of mangrove. He started up the engine,
backed off, then headed around a sweeping curve.

Beyond that, the
channel straightened out and he was able to put on more speed. Soon
they were alone with the mangroves, the purling water, and the
nocturnal predators. They were on the Wilderness Waterway, heading
due north toward Coot Bay.

Bennie tried to sit
up. Groaning, he flopped back down into his own blood. "Where we
goin', amigo? Even if you know a place, no use in, like,
hidin' out. I'll be dead by morning."

"Bastards die,"
Bennie said, "just like mere mortals." He tried to laugh
but it turned into a phlegmy cough.

Croaker didn't like
the heavy sound of it. He hoped to God the scalpel hadn't pierced a
lung. He forced himself to concentrate on the channel. It was
difficult to navigate at night, especially at speed. But with Bennie
pumping blood with each beat of his heart, he dared not slow down.

"Hey, amigo,
you hear 'bout the big-city ambulance chaser goes out to a potential
client's house?" Bennie was breathing as hard as if he'd just
run a marathon in ninety-plus heat. "It's in the sticks, see?
Real backwoods stuff. Seems this farmer, he got run over by his
neighbor's tractor an' broke his back. The neighbor's loaded, and you
know, the ambulance chaser smells a jackpot." Bennie paused to
breathe some. He sounded like a grandfather clock in need of an
overhaul. "So anyway, he pulls up in the farm's front yard,
steps outa his Porsche and into this, like, big pile of shit. He
looks down and goes, 'Jesus God, I'm melting!'"

Croaker laughed. For
his efforts, Bennie began a whole new round of coughing. When at last
he stopped, Croaker heard him say in a subdued voice, "Shit,
it's blood."

Just then Croaker saw
the uprooted buttonwood. It was shaped like a manatee, overhanging
the waterway. Just past it, Croaker eased the boat down a narrow
channel. The air was heavy with the rank aroma of mangrove.

Bennie looked around.
''What is this place?"

Croaker cut the
engine, let the boat drift down to the end of the channel. "Home,"
he said, leaping onto shore and hauling on the bow line, "if you
happen to be a Seminole who talks to birds and fish."

"Sounds like a
fucking Disney character," Bennie grumbled as Croaker scrambled
around and tied off the aft line.

Croaker took a deep
breath of the world he knew so well and went back into the boat to
gather Bennie up in his arms.

It was said that
Stone Tree walked with the spirits. This was repeated by Keys
fishermen and backcountry guides—people not normally
susceptible to flights of fancy. He had settled here because it was
the center of the world. This is what he had said when Croaker had
first sought him out.

"At the
center of the world I listen,” he had told Croaker.

"What do you
hear?" Croaker had asked.

And Stone Tree had
said: "Everything."

It was at that moment
that Croaker knew he wanted Stone Tree to be his guide. Only
gradually, as the days and nights passed in languid concentration,
melting one into the other, did he realize that he was here for more
than instruction on fishing.

People were afraid of
Stone Tree in the same way they are afraid of being alone in the
night. It was something they could not quite explain. As a
consequence, he was pretty much left alone. This was just the way he
liked it. It had occurred to Croaker that he let their fear stand
guard over him.

Stone Tree lived in a
rough wood and tin shack on a spit of land almost wholly surrounded
by red mangrove. You couldn't walk on the red mangrove because they
grew in the water. The groves were like a moat protecting a medieval
castle. Only a small neck of solid land connected the spit to the
"mainland."

Bennie's body was
growing heavier with each step. As Croaker picked his way across the
narrow neck, he was as bent over as an octogenarian with spinal
arthritis. As always, he passed close by the manzanilla tree. This
time of year, it was laden with small green applelike fruit. They
looked tasty, but even the sap was as caustic as lye. Ponce del Rey,
a Spanish explorer, had eaten one and had died in agony. As a small
child, Stone Tree had done the same. He'd grown ill but,
mysteriously, hadn't died. Afterward, his father had named him,
declaring him as strong as a stone tree.

Ahead, Croaker saw
movement and he froze. Joe came slithering out of the sawgrass and
white mangrove, eager to see who was invading its territory. Joe was
an eight-foot indigo snake that lived with Stone Tree.

Croaker went to his
knees, held out his biomechanical hand for Joe to smell. The
constrictor did this by flicking its tongue over the man-made
substances. Then it curled itself around the hand and slithered up
Croaker's arm. Its head touched Croaker's cheek, and again, its
forked tongue flicked out. This time it tasted salt sweat.

"Bennie,"
Croaker said. "It's okay. We're here."

But there was no
reply. Bennie had passed out as Croaker had transported him off the
boat.

3

Croaker whistled
softly as he rose and went up the moss-encrusted wooden steps to the
shack. The door opened and a towering figure was silhouetted by the
flickering light of myriad candles and a single Coleman lantern.
Stone Tree was thin as a reed at the edge of the water where he
lived.

"You are
expected," Stone Tree said. "All is in readiness."

Croaker was
unsurprised. Stone Tree knew things others did not. As Croaker put
Bennie gently down in the center of the room, Stone Tree said, "Joe
remembers adventures past. As always, he is partial to friends."
This was the nature of Stone Tree's greeting.

"It feels right
to be back," Croaker replied.

Stone Tree nodded.
"It was time, Walking Ibis."

Croaker had earned
his coming-of-age name the first time Stone Tree had seen him extrude
a stainless-steel nail from the tip of his biomechanical finger.
Stone Tree said it looked like an ibis's needle-like bill stabbing
for fish.

Croaker watched Stone
Tree's gaunt, lined face as he went to work. He was as tall as the
first Indians here, the Calusa, whose men were almost seven feet in
height, with cool, watchful eyes the color of a misty backcountry
dawn. He wore his white hair long, pulled back from his wide forehead
by a beaded deerskin headband. It hung in a ponytail, the end of
which was tied in a thick knot that bumped against his back like a
pendulum whenever he moved. He possessed a wry sense of humor dry as
a perfect martini. For all his isolation, Stone Tree had a worldly,
inquisitive mind. Where he got his detailed knowledge of the planet
Croaker hadn't a clue. Perhaps the kites and cormorants, crested
herons and frigate birds that passed by overhead delivered the daily
news.

He pressed his
withered left hand against Bennie's forehead. He hadn't been born
with that hand; he'd come by it unnaturally. A young man had come to
him with terminal cancer. Stone Tree had healed him. But in doing so
Stone Tree had taken the cancer inside himself. Now it was
encapsulated, like a cyst.

"I could see
it withering as the healing progressed!” he had told
Croaker. "There are all kinds of pain. This is surprising to
most people. But why should it not be so? Aren't there all kinds of
love? Of course! This was a good pain. I was privileged to experience
it."

With his right hand
Stone Tree broke off a large piece of sage, placed it in a shallow
bowl in which several coals burned white-hot. Instantly, the sage
smoldered, producing a chalky gray-green smoke. Stone Tree used his
hands to scoop the smoke as if it were a liquid. In this way he
wafted it over every part of Bennie's body, starting with his head
and ending with his feet. He did this until all the sage had turned
to ash. Then, with two long, slender fingers he plucked the
bottom-most coal from the bowl and placed it over the makeshift
bandage that Croaker had wrapped around the knife wound.

Croaker had seen
Stone Tree handle coals with his bare hands before, so he wasn't
surprised. The heat was so intense Croaker started to sweat. When
Stone Tree noticed this, he smiled. "You have felt this heat
before."

And instantly Croaker
recalled the snakebite that Stone Tree had treated. Like the warmth
given off by the Guarani spirit-stones, this heat had a healing
effect that was difficult to categorize.

The coal burned
through the layers of bloody cotton until it lay against the open
wound. Bennie didn't thrash or cry out. Neither did his eyes open The
heat increased until Croaker felt as if he were inside an oven.

In the meantime,
Stone Tree had taken up three panther claws. Large and wickedly
curved, they were black as obsidian, as if stained by long use. One
by one, he inserted them into Bennie's flesh—one into each
cheek, the third beside the place where the white-hot coal rested.

Stone Tree was ready
when the black liquid began to ooze out of the incisions he'd made.
He used the small bowl with the coals to catch the fluid. When the
coals were completely covered and cooled, the liquid stopped its
flow. Stone Tree handed the bowl to Croaker.

"Go outside and
find a clear area. Dig with only your hands and bury this. Be sure
not to get any of its contents on your skin."

Croaker did as Stone
Tree bade him. When he returned, Bennie had stopped bleeding. There
was a peaceful look on his face; his beathing was deep and even.
Stone Tree was stirring an iron pot that hung over a pit filled with
glowing coals. An aromatic soup brewed of rootstock and herbs infused
the shack with pungent aromas.

The two of them sat
beside the coals eating grilled fish, mashed vegetables, and dried
fruit. Stone Tree ate so little that Croaker suspected he'd already
had dinner, but it would have been impolite to let Croaker eat alone.
In silence, they listened to the sounds of the backcountry. The tree
frogs bleeping. The insects whirring. The haunted calls of small
predators. The lapping of the nearby water. The soughing of the wind
through the buttonwood and Jamaican dogwood. All drowned out, now and
again, by wild deluges of rain.

Croaker ate slowly.
Meals were a ritual of concentration punctuated by animated
conversation. This time, however, Stone Tree had no amusing stories
to tell. "You come into my home tonight, Walking Ibis. You bring
a wounded friend. Death stalks you. And yet there is something beyond
these circumstances that is different. Change is working itself
inside you." He reached out his withered hand and pressed it
against Croaker's forehead as he had done before with Bennie. The
hand was dry and cool as old wood.

"Do you know
what is meant when people say I walk with the spirits?"

"You know
things," Croaker said. "Which way the winds will blow, when
the storms will come and how bad they'll be. You knew

I was coming and
why. You speak to the animals. You're open to the cycles of nature."

Stone Tree nodded,
but there was a wry look to his face. "All these things are
true, as far as they go. But what's really meant is that I talk to
those who have passed beyond the world you and I know." Stone
Tree put down his food bowl. "Tonight I see you on my porch.
From the blood, I divine the nature of the storm that has followed
you here. But in your eyes I see the change working itself through
you. I see the healer's mark on you, as if by a tattooer's needle."

Croaker felt his
stomach constrict. "My friend's grandfather was a great Guarani
healer. A sukia."

"Yes,"
Stone Tree said. "I have heard of them. They use stones to
gather power and to store it."

"Soul-catchers."
Croaker thought of Humaità's spirit-stone in Heitor's
possession and he was filled with sudden dread. He remembered
Estrella's fear when he'd shown her Humaità's dark stone. "Do
you know something about the spirit-stones?"

Stone Tree shook his
head. "Very little. And what T do know is legend, rumor, call it
what you will. It is said that under proper circumstances the sukia
swallowed these stones. Then they became like gods."

"What does that
mean?"

Stone Tree shrugged.
"With a single touch of their hand they could heal the sick and
infirm… or they could destroy their enemies. It is the most
terrible of the sukia's transformations because it is
permanent. The stone stays inside. But because great power is gained,
something of equal value must be lost. This is the nature of the
universe."

"It didn't
happen with this sukia," Croaker said. "He was
killed many years ago—murdered by the brothers who've followed
us here. Before he died he told my friend that he would return as a
shark. Five days ago, we encountered a tiger shark. It was very
large, very fierce. My friend was sure—"

"That it was
Humaità."

Croaker stared,
dumbfounded. "How did you know his name?"

Stone Tree smiled and
lightly tapped Croaker's forehead with his withered hand. "He
told me, Walking Ibis." It scribed a circle on Croaker's
forehead. "He is here. Inside you. Tonight you also walk with
the spirits."

Croaker arranged
himself with Bennie's head in his lap. Slowly and laboriously, he fed
him the rootstock and herb soup. Bennie drank without protest. His
eyes were red rimmed and he seemed thoroughly dazed. Croaker didn't
blame him. He looked at the wound. It was raw and red and caked with
dried blood. But it was closed just as if it had been sutured by a
surgeon.

The wind rose
outside; mangrove branches scratched against the thin frame of the
shack and rain drummed intermittently against the tin roof. The tree
frogs remained, bleeping incessantly. But the insects had ceased to
whir. Croaker continued to feed Bennie while Joe dozed on his
shoulders.

In time, the gourd
was empty. Croaker put it aside, looked down at Bennie. He thought
about Humaità. He thought about spirit possession. Chills
crawled like worms through his insides, then dissipated. He didn't
believe in spirit possession. It didn't exist.

Bennie's eyes moved.
He stared up at Joe comfortably curled on Croaker's shoulders.
"Amigo, am I dreaming?" he said in a dry and
crusty voice. "What the hell's that?"

"Joe. He's an
indigo constrictor. Friendly as hell."

"Nuts, the both
of you."

"Not in the
least. Besides having a personality, he's convenient to have around.
He hunts other snakes, including the pygmy rattler, which could give
you a pretty nasty bite."

Croaker listened to
the storm. It was approaching quickly. He could feel the pressure
drop, like popping in his ears. As if in confirmation, thunder rolled
ominously. He looked down at the man in his arms. Survivors of
earthquakes or bomb blasts had that look of blankness, as if their
souls had been blasted into the background.

"If not now,
when?" Croaker's silence spurred him on: "I won't deny I
lied to you. Pero esto es agua pasada no mueve molino."
That's all in the past. "See, I had to. My grandfather's
bones—they're all I have left of him. I had to make sure they
didn't fall into the wrong hands."

"Like Antonio
and Heitor."

"That would be a
disaster," Bennie acknowledged. "All my grandfather's
powers would be theirs."

"Then they
didn't have them."

"Are you for
real? They'd, like, never agree to sell them back to me. They'd never
even let on they had 'em."

Croaker watched the
flicker of the candle flames. They seemed symbols of the storm, and
of the uncertain future. "So who had them? Who did you have to
meet at midnight?"

"Roubinnet."

"Rafe? Come on.
You can do better than that."

Bennie sighed. "I'm,
like, you know, unsurprised you don't believe me. Disappointed, but
unsurprised. I brought this on myself. But God hear me it's the
truth."

"Why should I
believe you?"

Bennie tried
unsuccessfully to laugh. "I can think of no good reason at all."
He closed his eyes briefly. He seemed to be summoning up some hidden
wellspring of strength. "Mira, amigo. I made a mistake.
I didn't trust you. What will you do now? Will you condemn me for,
like, life? Is there no way I can redeem myself? For good or ill, I'm
in your hands, Lewis."

Croaker was silent
for some time. He stared at nothing, listened to everything. Just as
Stone Tree had taught him. "Tell me about you and Rafe," he
said at length.

Bennie sighed, as if
he'd been holding his breath for Croaker's decision. "While he
was still mayor of Miami Roubinnet went into business with a
Colombian named Gabriella. Gabriella was a real wise guy, got in over
his head an' he went to jail."

"What happened?"
Croaker asked.

"Shit happened,
that's what." Bennie was clearly disgusted. "The idiot
decided to use Rafe's money an' get into the drug trade. Why not? He
imagined tons of money, the high, flashy life, buckets of power. He
got sucked into the whole damn thing." Bennie shook his head.
"Anyway, Gabriella, he buys this big German shepherd, see, an'
he takes him to a boyhood pal of his—a vet. The vet slits open
the dog's abdomen, and Gabriella, like, gives him a dozen plastic
bags of coke, which the vet sews into the abdominal cavity. Then,
Gabriella ships him off to the States."

"Okay. Then
what?"

"So Gabriella,
he's a novice at this kind a thing and the vet—he's nervous an'
he forgets to sterilize the plastic bags. The shepherd gets infected
and customs, they see a sick animal and turn him over to the
Stateside vets, who take X-rays and find the bags of coke. Wham-o,
they nail Gabriella to the fuckin' wall"

Bennie was silent for
a moment, resting. "Rafe knows nothing—or at least he says
he knows nothing," he continued. "But he calls me an',
like, asks me to get in the middle of the mess. To, you know,
extricate him from his partnership, like, after the fact, because the
fallout could kill him politically. But the Gabriella case gets
messy—too messy for me to deal with. The Colombian authorities
alluva sudden, they don't wanna deal—they don't wanna talk to
me—period. Which, I gotta say, considering who I know there, is
very fucking weird. I even get a death threat. So I back off. Rafe
gets pissed, hangs up on me, then reappears coupla days later
offering me a deal: I get him off the hook with this hot potato and
he'll get me my grandfather's bones."

Croaker glanced down
at Bennie. "That sounds like a bribe."

"Yeah. It did to
me, too." Bennie looked away for a moment. "But the
temptation was too great. I got him free. I chewed up a coupla favors
muy precioso." Very precious. "I fixed it so
nobody knew; nobody could ever link him to Gabriella and that
stinking drug deal."

"But that wasn't
the end of it."

"Fuck no."
Bennie bit his lower lip at the memory. "I come to Rafe for
payment an' he says the deal for the bones fell through. Que
lastima!" What a pity! "But all the while, I'm looking
in his eyes an' I, like, see the truth. An' it isn't pretty. The
truth is the fucker's changed his mind. He's got my grandfather's
bones but he doesn't want to give them up. Offered to pay me for my
time. A generous amount, no doubt there. Didn't matter what the
amount was, though. He'd fucked me good. I showed him what to do with
that money, and let me tell you, he didn't like it one bit."
Bennie looked up at Croaker. "God hear me, that gent has one
hairy ass."

The two of them
laughed, and to Croaker it felt very good.

"Yeah, but,
Bennie, how'd you know Rafe was lying?"

"I called the
sonuvabitch on it. And guess what? He admits that, yeah, maybe he can
still get the bones. But it's, like, gonna cost me.

Can you fuckin'
picture this. I've just done him this, like, humon-gous service, an'
he's fucked me. An' on top of that now I gotta do some more shit for
him. Then I get my grandfather's bones. Tonight was to be
the payoff. I was supposed to meet him at midnight, but this fuckin'
storm blew up. Because I wasn't in a, like, proper boat to ride out
the storm in the bay I had to get back to shore."

"What did Rafe
ask you to do?"

"Mediate, what
else? It's my specialty, no? But talk about a small world. One of the
principals is Juan Garcia Barbacena. Roubinnet is aware of my history
with this bastard, but he like asks me anyway. What the hell does he
care if it puts acid in my belly."

"So you agreed?"

"So I agreed.
What else could I do? It seems Barbacena had finally gotten too
high-handed. He'd become power mad, dangerously independent, and
contrary. The people who hired him want a final arbitration with
him—one last try at getting him back under their control. I
mean, Lewis, my impression: these people were ready to chop him if he
wouldn't knuckle under."

Croaker's pulse
quickened. "Let me guess. Barbacena wouldn't budge."

"Yeah. You could
say that." Bennie got a little smile on his face. "He as
much as told them to fuck off. Seemed to me when he walked out of the
meeting he'd, like, signed his own death warrant."

"When was this?"

"Beginning of
the year."

Now it all began to
make sense. Gunn had needed time to work out a way of terminating
Barbacena so that the ACTF's hands were absolutely clean. "Let
me take another guess," Croaker said. "The people he was
working for were Department of Justice. Man named Spaulding Gunn."
Gunn must have been desperate to involve a civilian like Bennie,
Croaker thought. But what choice did he have? Bennie was numero
uno at this kind of negotiation. He also had a long history of
being absolutely discreet. "So this was the extent of your
involvement. If the DOJ swore you to secrecy I can understand why you
couldn't tell me."

"It was
Department of Justice, amigo. I saw the badge. But the man's
name wasn't Gunn. At least, the name on the I.D. wasn't Gunn."
He shifted slightly, and it seemed to take a lot out of him. "It
was Ross Darling."

With his heart in his
mouth, Croaker said, "Bennie, this is very important. Can you
describe him?"

"Sure."
When he'd caught his breath, Bennie said, "He was, like, medium
height and build. He had this, you know, heavy, deliberate way of
moving. Like a boxer or wrestler. And white hair like an old man,
only he wasn't all that old. Had these red cheeks, like you see on
mountaineers or veteran drunkards. This man was cold sober, though.
Could see it in his eyes—pale blue like ice. God hear me, I've
seen this kind of man before, Lewis. Wouldn't hesitate to kill anyone
who crossed him. If he ever had a conscience, you can be damn sure
he'd strangled it in the darkness of one childhood night."

Croaker's blood ran
cold. Bennie's description was right on the money. The only trouble
was it wasn't Spaulding Gunn he was talking about. It was Ross
Darling.

Everything Darling
had told Croaker about the interbureau war between DICTRIB and the
ACTF was the truth, only in reverse: Darling and DICTRIB were the
ones running Barbacena and the Mexican operation.

Croaker's outfit, the
ACTF, was trying to stop it. In a moment of revelation, Croaker could
see how the scenario had happened. Alienated agents from the ACTF had
left Gunn's aegis and, forming a clandestine alliance with certain
senators and businessmen, had re-created DICTRIB in their own image.
DICTRIB's sole purpose, then, was to be the think tank and the
conduit for the Mexican operation that would eventually put control
of the Mexican government in the hands of an elite few Americans.

Darling had cut
Croaker off from ever contacting anyone inside the ACTF. Of course.
If Croaker had, he'd have found out the truth. And because the ACTF
had lost touch with him and could not account for his movements, they
had assumed he'd crossed over and joined DICTRIB. Which explained the
attempt on his life at the Brickell Bridge.

How ironic, Croaker
thought. It was Antonio Bonita who'd told him that everyone was lying
to him. Everyone, that is, but Antonio himself.

fatone Tree crouched
beneath a buttonwood, surrounded by darkness and the rain. Croaker
hunkered down beside him. He'd left Joe back in the shack to guard
Bennie.

"I've been
tracking the storm," Stone Tree said. "From rain and wind
you have nothing to fear." He held a forked twig between his
knobby fingers. "As for the storm that followed you here, he's
hidden in the hammock." Hammock was the Indian word for
forest. "Real close now."

Croaker was about to
get up when Stone Tree put his good hand on his arm. "It's a
damned waste of energy to hate the storm. Find the way to its heart."

"The problem is,
that's been tried before. These brothers were able to murder the
sukia because of his compassion."

Stone Tree lifted one
fist. "Force." He lifted his other hand. "Only begets
more force." He cocked his head. "Listen to everything.
Decide for yourself what is truth and what is merely perception."

Croaker almost
laughed. "Why not? Ever since I got involved with the Bonitas
almost everyone I've met has lied to me."

"Are you
surprised, Walking Ibis?" He lifted his hands. "This world
is a lie. Beyond it, the truth pulses like light on the ocean floor.
The spirits speak when I walk with them. Existence isn't limited to
this world we see with our eyes. We're butterflies pinned to a page
only if we allow it." His head turned quickly, though Croaker
heard nothing but the soughing of the wind through the buttonwood and
the sawgrass, the energetic splash of rain. "Go now," Stone
Tree said. And as Croaker rose, he added: "You believe this
storm is deadly. Do not be deceived, Walking Ibis. For you, it is
something else altogether."

4

Croaker moved
silently through the hardwood hammock. Rain pattered down, every so
often gusting through the mangroves. Within thirty yards Stone Tree's
encampment had disappeared from view. On either side mangrove rose
like spectral fingers. They swayed in the wind like netting over a
beehive.

Croaker paused beside
the manzanilla, momentarily unsure which way to go. Once again he was
overcome by the thought of how at home he felt in the darkness. In
New York, he'd worked while others slept. And because of his work
they could sleep more soundly. But there was an odd thing that
happened when you were at home in the night. You became dislocated.

The normal rhythms of
life—waking in the morning, eating breakfast at eight, being at
work at nine—were disrupted. As the connections to the world
around you were slowly severed you found yourself becoming more
self-reliant.

All this he saw as
helpful to him. During the day there was a steady buzz—a
cacophony of frenzied movement that kept people alert and fixated on
their own immediate problems. At night, when sleep overtook them,
this static was reduced to a murmur. Then, the rhythms of what Stone
Tree called the larger reality rose like spectral sounds in the
forest.

In the rain-filled
night Croaker could sense Heitor. Heitor was a hunter; this is what
he'd been itching for ever since the two of them had met. Predator
and prey, together in the wilderness. What was it Heitor had said? A
man is understood only when he stands alone.

A gust of wind
brought him a whiff of ozone. He plucked a small green apple with his
biomechanical hand and set off down the spine of the hardwood
hammock.

Thunder rumbled, and
the sky cracked open in a cool, blue-white glare. The storm made
tracking impossible. Not only was the physical spoor obliterated but
the rain took all scent out of the air.

Gradually he became
aware that he was being watched. Moving cautiously between the
strangler figs he was able to pick out a pair of amber eyes in the
sawgrass underbrush. He reached the end of the hammock. All around
him were mangrove—white on the land, black at the edge of the
water, red arching out into the waterway itself. He made a clicking
sound and the amber eyes disappeared.

He plunged quickly
into the mangrove, following. He was close enough now to partially
see the shadow, the tiny movements of leaf and grass stalks as the
body brushed by. Gaining ground, he saw that they were paralleling
the edge of dry land. Three hundred yards farther on he knew the
waterway curved inward, reducing the mangrove islet to a narrow
isthmus.

He made his move
then, leaping in front of the shadow just as it ran out of land. It
turned and, as he came up on it, reared onto its hind legs, its jaws
hinging open as it spat and hissed.

He recoiled. Christ!
It was a bobcat!

Croaker willed
himself to freeze. He watched those lambent amber eyes staring at him
as the beast snarled and raked the air with a forepaw. Slowly, never
taking his eyes from the bobcat, he began to back away.

That was when Heitor
took him. Heitor seemed to fly through the wind and the rain as he
leaped from his hiding place within the black mangrove. Landing on
Croaker's back, he drove a fist into Croaker's side, and they both
pitched into the tangle of arched mangrove roots that made up the
shoreline.

Instantly, Heitor
plunged a forked stick into the muck, pinioning Croaker's
biomechanical hand. With the hand embedded in the black viscous
detritus, Croaker was deprived of the leverage he needed to use it
effectively. Dimly he was aware of Heitor's lopsided appearance as he
favored the shoulder where he'd been shot. He wanted to take
advantage of the wound, but Heitor didn't seem in the least bit
weakened.

On the contrary,
Heitor, astride him, smashed his fist into Croaker's face. "This
is for the first time you broke my nose." His fist drove into
Croaker face again. "This is for the second time. And this is
for the scar you left me."

Croaker tasted his
own blood. Consciousness flickered in and out as Heitor pummeled him.

The assault ceased as
abruptly as it had begun. Croaker opened eyes caked with blood and
muck. Heitor had Humaità's soul-catcher in one hand, a scalpel
in the other. The cut Croaker had made in his right cheek looked raw
and angry, as if it pulsed with Heitor's rage.

"Antonio said to
wait for him. He said not to tackle you on my own." He sneered.
"Cautious one! Foolish one! Not tonight. Mira, señor,
how Humaità's secrets heal my shoulder. Tonight belongs to the
hunter!" He bent low over Croaker. "Look into my eyes. I
want you to recognize your death there."

Croaker did, indeed,
see something dark and squirmy in Heitor's eyes and something inside
him quailed. Was it real or the power of suggestion? In his present
position, he knew he had no chance in a physical struggle. But there
must be another way. "Heitor," he said, "tell me how
it can be that Antonio is still in love with Rosa?"

"Of course he
didn't." Croaker was working his biomechanical hand in the muck,
manufacturing room to maneuver. "If he did, you'd want to know
why he was there. And he wouldn't dare tell you the truth—that
he'd come to revisit Rosa's murder. To confess to me."

Heitor's eyes had
clouded over. "Why would he want to do that?"

"Because you
were right. Rosa had changed him. She told him he was damned. And the
very act of your murdering her proved it to him. For the first time I
think he understood the nature of the evil the two of you had
created."

A certain amount of
relief showed on Heitor's face. "Now I know you're lying. If
what you're saying was true, why would Antonio continue?"

"Simple. He
couldn't stop himself." Croaker had burrowed his biomechanical
hand deep enough to regain some motion. "Your way of life had
become an end in itself. It had taken on a life of its own. Isn't
that true, Heitor?"

"The game. Yes,
yes." Heitor's tone was dismissive. "Madre de mentims,
you're just stating the obvious."

"Except that
Antonio can no longer live with what you've created." Slowly, in
the muck, Croaker turned his biomechanical hand on edge so the thumb
was uppermost. "In fact, he never could. Humaità
recognized this spark of humanity in Antonio and tried to play him
against you. I'm right, aren't I, Heitor?"

"Humaità."
Heitor's jaw clenched as he hissed out the single world like an
epithet. "From the first, he insisted on separating us. He said
we were different, individuals. He ignored the bond between us. No,
no. The dark stones know that's wrong. He worked to sever our bond.
Hijo de putanal Why? Didn't he understand that the two of us
couldn't survive separately?"

"No!"
Heitor's face was dark with rage and remembrance. "The two of
us! Everything is the two of us."

"Not
everything." One roll of the dice. Croaker knew this was all
that was left him. Life or death depended on the truth of his
supposition. "It wasn't the two of you who murdered Humaità,
was it?"

Silence. The wind
soughing through the mangrove was like someone in pain.

"The two of us,
yes." Heitor was like a child clinging to a cherished belief
that had saved him from the hideous truth.

"No,"
Croaker said. "It was you. You were always the hunter, the one
with the insatiable blood lust. You murdered Humaità on your
own."

Heitor was back in
Asuncion, on that dark night on the Paraguay River. "That night
I killed him, it was like this, stormy, filled with an evil rain. I
drowned him. I remember the bubbles dribbling from his mouth as the
air escaped his lungs. Beautiful! And he was so calm, like he'd known
all along what would happen. It made me tremble."

Heitor licked his
lips. "Afterward, Antonio said I'd slipped my leash. He used
that word deliberately, to show me what an animal I could be. I've
been so careful with you, he said. And he had. Time and again
he'd told me how important Humaità was to us. But I knew the
truth. I could see how the old man was trying to destroy us, to sever
our special bond. Though it caused me pain, I hid this truth even
from Antonio. The dark stones know he wouldn't have understood. I
knew. He'd try to stop me. He'd jerk my leash, make me crouch by him,
panting and so angry I would lose my breath. Oh, yes. How many times
had he done it before?"

"That night,
Antonio could no longer be your keeper," Croaker said. "Rosa
was right. When you murdered Humaità, you damned him. He
turned from being your failed conscience to your eventual abettor.
That's what's eating him alive."

With a wordless cry,
Heitor drove the scalpel toward Croaker's throat. In the same
instant, Croaker smashed upward with all his strength. His
biomechanical hand splintered the thick hardwood stick. The edge of
the scalpel glanced off the polycarbonate shell. But such was
Heitor's strength of determination that the scalpel pierced the meat
of Croaker's right shoulder.

Heitor screamed. The
spurting of Croaker's blood seemed to inflame him all the more, and
he twisted the scalpel in the wound. Pain streaked through Croaker's
body, driving him to the edge of unconsciousness. He felt himself
slipping away. He was astonished, then terrified at the ease with
which he could let go of everything, fall backward into the endless
abyss.

Then he saw the dark
outline of his biomechanical hand, and he remembered. That tiny spark
of memory fueled the terror. Adrenaline surged into his bloodstream.
The ripped seams of consciousness stitched themselves together for a
few more precious moments.

He ground his fingers
against his palm, the pressure crushing the tiny sphere he held
there. Then, his biomechanical fingers flowered open, and he jammed
the pale paste into Heitor's open mouth. Immediately, he jabbed the
knuckles of his right hand into Heitor's Adam's apple.

Heitor swallowed. He
couldn't help himself. His eyes watered as he ingested the pulp and
sap of the manzanilla apple.

Heitor screamed. It
was a blood-curdling sound that terrified even the bobcat, who
bounded over them and quickly disappeared into the black maze of the
hammock.

Arching up, Heitor
flung himself this way and that. He clawed at his throat, then his
chest and belly. His eyes were open wide and rolling. The whites were
bloodshot, and his mouth worked spastically.

Then he caught sight
of Croaker, and with a supreme effort of will, he managed to regain
some control over himself. With a trembling hand he produced
Humaità's spirit-stone. He pressed it against the center of
his chest.

For a moment, nothing
seemed to happen. The squally rain had ceased to fall some time ago.
Now even the wind had died. It was as if the night itself was holding
its breath.

"There, señor.
You see?" Heitor sat up. He was no longer trembling. His face
had lost that white, pinched look. "Held I prevents me
from being poisoned. You cannot harm me, señor. I
welcome you to try—"

His voice failed him
from one instant to the next. His eyes bugged out as his abdomen
started to inflate. Horror crossed his face; sweat broke out on his
forehead, ran in rivulets down his cheeks and beside his ears. His
contorted expression appeared to mirror a terrible struggle going on
inside him.

"I—I…"
Heitor's eyes rolle'd up until only the whites shone, lambent as
neon. His lower jaw dropped open and a protracted hissing could he
heard emanating from deep within him. When eventually it died out,
his abdomen was completely deflated.

Croaker approached
him with caution. As he knelt over him, he could smell a peculiar
odor. It seemed to rise from his open mouth as well as from every
pore in his body. Even before he checked Heitor's pulse Croaker knew
he was dead. He reached out, took the soul-catcher from Heitor's lax
grip.

The pain in his
shoulder made him turn away. He needed to find a Jamaican dogwood. He
wanted to strip off a section of bark, press the underside against
his wound. Decades ago, the Calusa and Seminoles dried and ground
this bark, spreading the powder on the water. Its powerful narcotic
would stun the fish that ate it. They'd float up to the surface where
the fishermen netted them by the dozen.

He set off for the
hardwood hammock, certain he'd find the dogwood there. But he'd only
taken a pace or two when he had an instant flash of Antonio's face.
There'd been no sound at all to warn him. He reacted, but it was too
late. A section of buttonwood, thick and long as a cudgel, smashed
into the side of his head and he fell to the ground, unconscious.

5

When Croaker had been
on the force they'd had an unofficial saying. It was written on the
precinct's ready-room wall: YOUR GUN IS YOUR RIGHT ARM AND YOUR RIGHT
LEG. DON'T BECOME A CRIPPLE! "Believe it. We live and die by
that commandment!' he'd been told on his first day. "For
the powers that be, it's a purely fiscal policy. They don't want you
to lose the damn thing. For me, it's a matter of face. If you're shot
with your own sidearm it goes on my fucking record as well as yours."

Upon awakening,
Croaker had cause to remember this incident. Looking down at his body
he saw that he was a cripple all over again.

He wiped the rain out
of his eyes and stared in disbelief at the stub of his left forearm.
Somehow, Antonio had managed to disengage his biomechanical hand's
locking mechanism. Croaker felt as naked as if all his clothes had
been stripped off.

He sat up and
immediately put a hand to his head. He was groggy and there was a
dull throbbing he couldn't stop. He took a couple of deep breaths,
then looked around. He was on the boat he and Bennie had used to get
to Stone Tree's shack.

With his right hand,
he dug into his pocket. His heart sank. Hu-maita's spirit-stone was
gone. Now Antonio had every advantage.

Croaker hauled
himself to his feet. As he made his way aft, he almost stumbled. He
brought himself up short. He'd become accustomed to the weight of the
biomechanical hand. Without it, he seemed like a ship without a
rudder. He stared into the water where an alligator lay, still as
death, eyeing him with dispassion.

He moved on, his eyes
on the deck. Hadn't Bennie's .22 been left on the deck? Now there was
no sign of it.

"The gun has
been disappeared, señor.” Antonio said from
behind him.

Antonio stepped from
the shadows at the bow of the boat, leveling a Mack-10 machine pistol
at Croaker. The Mack-10 was a compact automatic weapon that could
spew out bullets at an appalling rate.

"Isn't that a
bit of overkill? I'm only one man."

"But such a
man," Antonio said quite seriously. "Heitor had Humaità's
soul-catcher yet you killed him." Antonio's face seemed a mask
beneath which muscles twitched as if they were emotions long held in
check. "What secret weapon did you use, I wonder?"

Croaker lifted his
stub. "What weapon? You managed to get my hand off even though
it was locked in place."

Antonio didn't appear
to hear him. His amber eyes were clouded with a swirl of emotion.
"Señor, I cried for him. Verdad. I had
sworn to protect him—and I did. To the best of my abilities.
But in the end Heitor had a will of his own."

"And he followed
that will, come what may," Croaker said. "He always did."

"You know it
all. Detective." Antonio had tried to inject a note of contempt
in his voice, but failed. He jerked his head. "Did you wonder
why I kept you alive? I need you to navigate through this cursed
storm."

"Where are we
going?"

Antonio flicked the
ugly, blunt muzzle of the Mack-10, indicating Croaker should move
aft. "Where do you think?"

"I can imagine
how much you covet the bones," Croaker said as he was herded
aft. "I understand the power in them makes the soul-catcher
insignificant."

"Not
insignificant, no." Antonio shrugged. "But together, señor,
if I had them both, it would almost be as if Humaità is
resurrected." He closed his hand into a fist, pressed it to his
chest. "And all his knowledge, all his power would be here,
inside me."

For Croaker, that
possibility was a frightening thought indeed. He knew he'd have to
stop Antonio from getting Humaità's bones at all cost. "What
I can't figure out is why you let Heitor do it," he said as he
took the wheel. "Humaità had taught you everything. He
believed in you. With him alive, your life was set. And yet you
decided to burn all of that on his funeral pyre. You helped Heitor,
even forgave him. The two of you hid the truth and went on."

"I had no
choice, señor."

"That's
nonsense." Croaker started up the engine, threw it into reverse.
"In the end, choices are all we have to call our own. They're
what define us, Antonio. They've certainly defined you."

Antonio grunted.
"Madre de mentims, life is sweet when you have all the
answers."

Croaker thought
Antonio sounded bitter as he slowly backed the boat through the
channel that Stone Tree had hand-dug off the main waterway. He looked
at the shallow water and thought of fate. In Southeast Asia, where he
had spent much time, fate was a big thing. It ruled a person's life
from the moment of birth to the instant of death. The Chinese, for
example, believed that it was wrong to struggle against your fate.
Acceptance of what would inevitably come was counseled. Croaker could
never quite buy that line of thinking. To him it was like lying down
like a dog in the street to die. Couldn't do it. Never would.

It wasn't good to
think of such things, he knew. He barely understood the concept of
fate, let alone whether or not he believed in it. But the alternative
to thinking these thoughts was worse. For then he'd have to grapple
with the realization that he was going to die here, facedown in two
feet of brackish water. Just like in Jenny's spirit-stone vision.